RAK'C 

THOMPSON 


UC-NRLF 


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B   3   3ES    2^ 


SHELLEY 

BY 
FRANCIS  THOMPSON 


SHELLEY 

BY  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 


With  an  Introduction 
by  the  R<  Honble 

GEORGE  WYNDHAM 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK 

1910 


I    ,    .    c  ' 

<      I         I    . 


rf^r 


1\ 


N 


TO 

THE  LADY  OF 

"LOVE  IN  DIAN'S  LAP" 

THIS  EDITION  OF 

FRANCIS  THOMPSON'S  ESSAY 

IS  DEDICATED 

IN  DOUBLE  FEALTY 

BY  WJM. 


wd       353 


NINTH  THOUSAND 


THE  CONTENTS 

The  Introduction  by  George  Wynd- 
ham  Page  9 

SHELLEY  by  Francis  Thompson  17 
Facsimile  of  the  MS.  77 

The  Notes  by  W.M.  79 


THE  INTRODUCTION 

BY  GEORGE  WYNDHAM 

[The  following  Appreciation  is  taken  from 
a  Letter  addressed  by  Mr  Wyndham,  after 
he  had  read  the  "Shelley"  article  in  The 
Dublin  Reviezv,  to  the  editor  of  that  peri- 
odical, Mr  Wilfrid  Ward.  The  friends  then 
permitted  to  read  the  Letter  were  inevi- 
tably eager  to  share  with  others  their  ad- 
vantage; and  the  Literary  Executor  of 
Francis  Thompson  gratefully  acknowledges 
Mr  Wyndham's  and  Mr  Ward's  good  will 
in  granting  his  request  that  what  was  writ- 
ten as  a  private  Letter  should  here  stand  in 
lieu  of  any  more  formal  Introduction.] 

I  must  now  tell  you  that  I  have 
read  Francis  Thompson's  Shelley  more 
than  once  to  myself,  and  once  aloud. 

For  the  moment  I  will  sav  that  it 
is  the  most  important  contribution  to 
pure  Letters  written  in  English  during 
the  last  twenty  years.  In  saying  that,  I 
compare  this  Essay  in  criticism  with 

9 


THE  INTRODUCTION 

Poetry,  as  well  as  with  other  critical 
Essays. 

Speaking  from  memory,  Swin- 
burne's last  effective  volume,  Astrophel 
with  the  Nympholept  in  it,  came  out  in 
'87  or  '88;  Browning's yfWtfWtf  in  '87. 
Tennyson's  CEnone  is  also,  I  think,  at 
the  verge  of  my  twenty  years.  But, 
even  so,  these  were  pale  autumn  blos- 
soms of  more  radiant  springs.  It  may 
be,  when  posterity  judges,  that  Thomp- 
son's own  poems  alone  will  overthrow 
this  opinion. 

In  any  case  there  is  a  strain  in  a 

comparison    between     criticism     and 

poetry;   prose  and  verse.   It   is  more 

natural  to  seek  comparison  with  other 

essays  devoted  to  the  appreciation  of 

poetry.  I  have  a  very  great  regard  for 

Matthew  Arnold's  Essays  in  Criticism, 

partly    reasoned,    partly    sentimental. 

But  they  were  earlier.  They  did  not 

reach  such  heights.  They  do  not  handle 

10 


BY  GEORGE  WYNDHAM 

subjects,  as  a  rule,  so  pertinent  to 
Poetry.  When  they  do,  in  the  "  Words- 
worth "  and  "  Byron  "  (Second  Series) , 
they  are  outclassed  by  this  Essay.  The 
"Heine"  essays  deal  with  Religion 
rather  than  Poetry.  The  only  recent 
English  Essay  on  Poetry — and,  there- 
fore, life  temporal  and  eternal — which 
challenges  comparison,  as  I  read 
Thompson's  Shelley ',  is  Myers's  Virgil* 
and  specially  the  First  Part. 

I  think  those  two  are  the  best  Eng- 
lish Essays  on  Poetry,  of  our  day. 
Myers  gains  by  virtue  of  Virgil's  wider 
appeal  to  mortal  men  in  all  ages. 
Thompson  gains  by  virtue  of  the  fact 
that  he  is  himself  a  poet,  writing  on 
the  poet  who,  in  English,  appeals 
specially  to  poets.  His  subject  is  nar- 
rower, but  his  style  is  incomparable  in 
the  very  qualities  at  which  Myers 
aimed;  of  rhythm  and  profuse  illus- 
tration.   Both,    perhaps,   exceeded   in 


ii 


THE  INTRODUCTION 

these  qualities.  But  Thompson,  the 
poet,  is  the  better  man  at  varying  and 
castigating  his  prose  style.  He  is  rich 
and  melodic,  where  Myers  is,  at  mo- 
ments, sweet  and  ornate.  Both  are  sen- 
timental; and  each  speaks  out  of  his 
own  sorrow.  Myers  sorrowed  after 
confirmation  of  Immortality.  Thomp- 
son sorrowed  out  of  sheer  misery. 
When  Myers  writes  of  Virgil's 
"  intimations"  of  Immortality,  he 
is  thinking  of  his  own  sorrow. 
When  Thompson  writes  of  Mangan's 
sheer  misery,  he  is  thinking  of  his  own 
Slough  of  Despond.  Both  mean  to  be 
personally  reticent.  But  Thompson 
succeeds.  Unless  I  knew  Thompson's 
story,  I  could  not  read  between  the 
lines  of  his  wailing  over  Mangan.  But 
anyone  who  reads  Myers  sees  the  blots 
of  his  tears.  Again,  Myers  is  conscious 
of  Virgil  as  a  precursor  on  the  track 
of  unrevealed  immortality.  Thompson 


12 


BY  GEORGE  WYNDHAM 
seems — is,  I  believe — unconscious  of 
any  comparison  between  himself  and 
Shelley,  as  angels  ascending  the  irides- 
cent ladders  of  sunlit  imagination.  He 
follows  the  "Sun-treader"  with  his 
eye,  unaware  that  his  feet  are  automa- 
tically scaling  the  Empyrean. 

That  his  article  is  addressed  to  Catho- 
lics in  no  way  deflects  its  aim.  It  begins 
with  an  apologia  for  wrriting  on  Shelley. 
It  ends  with  an  apologia  for  Shelley. 
These  are  but  the  grey  goose-feathers 
that  speed  it  to  the  universal  heart  of 
man.  There  it  is  pinned  and  quivers. 

The  older  I  get,  the  more  do  I  affect 
the  two  extremes  of  literature.  Let  me 
have  either  pure  Poetry,  or  else  the 
statements  of  actors  and  sufferers. 
Thompson's  article,  though  an  Essay 
in  prose  criticism,  is  pure  Poetry,  and 
also,  unconsciously,  a  human  document 
of  intense  suffering.  But  I  won't  pity 
him.  He  scaled  the  heavens  because  he 

13 


THE  INTRODUCTION 

had  to  sing,  and  so  dropped  in  a  niche 
above  the  portals  of  the  temple  of 
Fame.  And  little  enough  would  he 
care  for  that!  Why  should  he  ?  Myers 
doubted.  But  Thompson  knew  that 
souls,  not  only  of  poets  but  of  saints, 
"beacon  from  the  abode  where  the 
eternal  are."  He  is  a  meteor  exhaled 
from  the  miasma  of  mire;  and  all 
meteors,  earth-born  and  Heaven-fallen, 
help  the  Heavens  to  declare  the  glory 
of  God.  Coeli  enarrant.  But  the  gram- 
mar of  their  speech  is  the  large  utter- 
ance of  such  men  made  "  splendid  with 
swords. " 

GEORGE  WYNDHAM. 
Saighton  Grange,  Chester, 
September  i6,  1908. 


SHELLEY 

BY  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

THE  Church,  which  was  once 
the  mother  of  poets  no  less 
than  of  saints,  during  the  last 
two  centuries  has  relinquished  to  aliens 
the  chief  glories  of  poetry,  if  the  chief 
glories  of  holiness  she  has  preserved 
for  her  own.  The  palm  and  the  laurel, 
Dominic  and  Dante,  sanclity  and  song, 
grew  together  in  her  soil:  she  has  re- 
tained the  palm,  but  forgone  the  laurel. 
Poetry  in  its  widest  sense,*  and  when 
not  professedly  irreligious,  has  been  too 
much  and  too  long  among  many  Catho- 
lics either  misprised  or  distrusted;  too 
much  and  too  generally  the  feeling  has 

*That  is  to  say,  taken  as  the  general  animating  spirit 
of  the  Fine  Arts. 

17  B 


SHELLEY 

been  that  it  is  at  best  superfluous,  at 
worst  pernicious,  most  often  danger- 
ous. Once  poetry  was,  as  she  should  be, 
the  lesser  sister  and  helpmate  of  the 
Church;  the  minister  to  the  mind,  as 
the  Church  to  the  soul.  But  poetry 
sinned,  poetry  fell ;  and,  in  place  of 
lovingly  reclaiming  her,  Catholicism 
cast  her  from  the  door  to  follow  the  feet 
of  her  pagan  seducer.  The  separation 
has  been  ill  for  poetry;  it  has  not  been 
well  for  religion. 

Fathers  of  the  Church  (we  would 
say),  pastors  of  the  Church,  pious  laics 
of  the  Church:  vou  are  taking  from  its 
walls  the  panoply  of  Aquinas;  take  also 
from  its  walls  the  psaltery  of  Alighieri. 
Unroll  the  precedents  of  the  Church's 
past;  recall  to  your  minds  that  Francis 
of  Assisi  was  among  the  precursors 
of  Dante ;  that  sworn  to  Poverty  he 
forswore   not   Beauty,    but    discerned 

through  the   lamp   Beauty  the  Light 

is 


SHELLEY 
God;  that  he  was  even  more  a  poet  in 
his  miracles  than  in  his  melody;  that 
poetry  clung  round  the  cowls  of  his 
Order.  Follow  his  footsteps;  you  who 
have  blessings  for  men,  have  you  no 
blessing  for  the  birds?  Recall  to  your 
memory  that,  in  their  minor  kind,  the 
love  poems  of  Dante  shed  no  less  hon- 
our on  Catholicism  than  did  the  great 
religious  poem  which  is  itself  pivoted 
on  love;  that  in  singing  of  heaven  he 
sang  of  Beatrice — this  supporting  angel 
was  still  carven  on  his  harp  even  when 
he  stirred  its  strings  in  Paradise.  What 
you  theoretically  know,  vividly  realize : 
that  with  many  the  religion  of  beauty 
must  always  be  a  passion  and  a  power, 
that  it  is  only  evil  when  divorced  from 
the  worship  of  the  Primal  Beauty. 
Poetry  is  the  preacher  to  men  of  the 
earthly  as  you  of  the  Heavenly  Fair- 
ness; of  that  earthly  fairness  which  God 
has  fashioned  to  his  own  image  and 

19  B2 


SHELLEY 

likeness.  You  proclaim  the  day  which 
the  Lord  has  made,  and  she  exults  and 
rejoices  in  it.  You  praise  the  Creator 
for  His  works,  and  she  shows  you  that 
they  are  very  good.  Beware  how  you 
misprise  this  potent  ally,  for  hers  is  the 
art  of  Giotto  and  Dante:  beware  how 
you  misprise  this  insidious  foe,  for  hers 
is  the  art  of  modern  France  and  of 
Byron.  Her  value,  if  you  know  it  not, 
God  knows,  and  know  the  enemies  of 
God.  If  you  have  no  room  for  her  be- 
neath the  wings  of  the  Holy  One,  there 
is  place  for  her  beneath  the  webs  of  the 
Evil  One:  whom  you  discard,  he  em- 
braces; whom  you  cast  down  from  an 
honourable  seat,  he  will  advance  to  a 
haughty  throne;  the  brows  you  dis- 
laurel  of  a  just  respect,  he  will  bind 
with  baleful  splendours ;  the  stone 
which  you  builders  reject,  he  will  make 
his  head  of  the  corner.  May  she  not 
prophesy  in  the  temple?  then  there  is 


20 


SHELLEY 

ready  for  her  the  tripod  of  Delphi. 
Eye  her  not  askance  if  she  seldom  sing 
directly  of  religion :  the  bird  gives 
glory  to  God  though  it  sings  only  of 
its  innocent  loves.  Suspicion  creates  its 
own  cause;  distrust  begets  reason  for 
distrust.  This  beautiful,  wild,  feline 
poetry,  wild  because  left  to  range  the 
wilds,  restore  to  the  hearth  of  your 
charity,  shelter  under  the  rafter  of 
your  Faith;  discipline  her  to  the  sweet 
restraints  of  your  household,  feed  her 
with  the  meat  from  your  table,  soften 
her  writh  the  amity  of  your  children; 
tame  her,  fondle  her,  cherish  her — you 
will  no  longer  then  need  to  flee  her. 
Suffer  her  to  wanton,  suffer  her  to 
play,  so  she  play  round  the  foot  of  the 
Cross! 

There  is  a  change  of  late  years: 
the  Wanderer  is  being  called  to  her 
Father's  house,  but  we  would  have 
the  call  yet  louder,  we  would  have  the 


2  t 


SHELLEY 

proffered  welcome  more  unstinted. 
There  are  still  stray  remnants  of  the  old 
intolerant  distrust.  It  is  still  possible 
for  even  a  French  historian  of  the 
Church  to  enumerate  among  the  arti- 
cles cast  upon  Savonarola's  famous 
pile,  poesies  erotiques,  tant  des  anciens  que 
des  modernes,  livres  impies  ou  corrapteurs, 
Ovide,  Tibulle,  Proper  ce,  pour  ne  nommer 
que  les  plus  ccnnus,  Dante,  Petrarque, 
Boccace,  tous  ces  auteurs  Italiens  qui  deja 
souillaient  les  dmes  et  ruinaient  les  mceurs, 
en  creant  ou  perfecfionnant  la  langue* 
Blameworthy  carelessness,  at  the  least, 
which  can  class  the  Vita  Nuova  with 
the  Ars  Amandi  and  the  Decameron! 
And  among  many  English  Catholics 
the  spirit  of  poetry  is  still  often  received 
with  a  restricted,  Puritanical  greeting 
rather  than  with  the  traditionally 
Catholic  joyous  openness. 

*The  Abbe  Bareille  was  not,  of  course,  responsible 
for  Savonarola's  taste,  only  for  thus  endorsing  it. 

2  2. 


SHELLEY 

We  ask,  therefore,  for  a  larger  inter- 
est, not  in  purely  Catholic  poetry,  but 
in  poetry  generally,  poetry  in  its  widest 
sense.  With  few  exceptions,  whatso- 
ever in  our  best  poets  is  great  and 
good  to  the  non-Catholic,  is  great 
and  good  also  to  the  Catholic;  and 
though  Faber  threw  his  edition  of 
Shelley  into  the  fire  and  never  re- 
gretted the  act;  though,  moreover, 
Shelley  is  so  little  read  among  us  that 
we  can  still  tolerate  in  our  Churches 
the  religious  parody  which  Faber 
should  have  thrown  after  his  three- 
volumed  Shelley;* — in  spite  of  this, 
we  are  not  disposed  to  number  among 
such  exceptions  that  straying  spirit  of 
light. 

We  have  among  us  at  the  present 
day  no  lineal  descendant,  in  the  poeti- 

*  We  mean,  of  course,  the  hymn,  "I  rise  from  dreams 
of  time." 

23 


SHELLEY 

cal  order,  of  Shelley;  and  any  such  off- 
spring of  the  aboundingly  spontaneous 
Shelley  is  hardly  possible,  still  less  likely, 
on  account  of  the  defect  by  which  (we 
think)  contemporary  poetry  in  general, 
as  compared  with  the  poetry  of  the 
early  nineteenth  century,  is  mildewed. 
That  defect  is  the  predominance  of  art 
over  inspiration,  of  body  over  soul. 
We  do  not  say  the  defect  of  inspiration. 
The  warrior  is  there,  but  he  is  ham- 
pered by  his  armour.  Writers  of  high 
aim  in  all  branches  of  literature,  even 
when  they  are  not — as  Mr  Swinburne, 
for  instance,  is — lavish  in  expression, 
are  generally  over-deliberate  in  expres- 
sion. Mr  Henry  James,  delineating  a 
fictitious  writer  clearly  intended  to  be 
the  ideal  of  an  artist,  makes  him  regret 
that  he  has  sometimes  allowed  himself 
to  take  the  second-best  word  instead  of 
searching  for  the  best.  Theoretically, 
of  course,  one  ought  always  to  try  for 

24 


SHELLEY 
the  best  word.  But  practically,  the 
habit  of  excessive  care  in  word-selec- 
tion frequently  results  in  loss  of  spon- 
taneity; and,  still  worse,  the  habit  of 
always  taking  the  best  word  too  easily 
becomes  the  habit  of  always  taking  the 
most  ornate  word,  the  word  most  re- 
moved from  ordinary  speech.  In  con- 
sequence of  this,  poetic  diction  has 
become  latterly  a  kaleidoscope,  and 
one's  chief  curiosity  is  as  to  the  precise 
combinations  into  which  the  pieces 
will  be  shifted.  There  is,  in  fact,  a  cer- 
tain band  of  words,  the  Praetorian  co- 
horts of  poetry,  whose  prescriptive  aid 
is  invoked  by  every  aspirant  to  the 
poetical  purple,  and  without  whose 
prescriptive  aid  none  dares  aspire  to  the 
poetical  purple;  against  these  it  is  time 
some  banner  should  be  raised.  Perhaps 
it  is  almost  impossible  for  a  contem- 
porary writer  quite  to  evade  the  services 
of  the  free-lances  whom  one  encounters 


SHELLEY 

under  so  many  standards.*  But  it  is  at 
any  rate  curious  to  note  that  the  liter- 
ary revolution  against  the  despotic 
diction  of  Pope  seems  issuing,  like 
political  revolutions,  in  a  despotism  of 
its  own  making. 

This,  then,  we  cannot  but  think,  dis- 
tinguishes the  literary  period  of  Shelley 
from  our  own.  It  distinguishes  even  the 
unquestionable  treasures  and  master- 
pieces of  to-day  from  similar  trea- 
sures and  masterpieces  of  the  prece- 
dent day;  even  the  Lotus-Eaters  from 

*  We  are  a  little  surprised  at  the  fact,  because  so 
many  Victorian  poets  are,  or  have  been,  prose-writers 
as  well.  Now,  according  to  our  theory,  the  practice  of 
prose  should  maintain  fresh  and  comprehensive  a  poet's 
diction,  should  save  him  from  falling  into  the  hands  of 
an  exclusive  coterie  of  poetic  words.  It  should  react 
upon  his  metrical  vocabulary  to  its  beneficial  expansion, 
by  taking  him  outside  his  aristocratic  circle  of  language, 
and  keeping  him  in  touch  with  the  great  commonalty, 
the  proletariat  of  speech.  For  it  is  with  words  as  with 
men  :  constant  intermarriage  within  the  limits  of  a 
patrician  clan  begets  effete  refinement;  and  to  rein- 
vigorate  the  stock,  its  veins  must  be  replenished  from 
hardy  plebeian  blood. 

26 


SHELLEY 

Kub/a-K/ian;  even  Rossetti's  ballads 
from  ChristabeL  It  is  present  in  the 
restraint  of  Matthew  Arnold  no  less 
than  in  the  exuberance  of  Swin- 
burne, and  affects  our  writers  who 
aim  at  simplicity  no  less  than  those 
who  seek  richness.  Indeed,  nothing  is 
so  artificial  as  our  simplicity.  It  is  the 
simplicity  of  the  French  stage  ingenue. 
We  are  self-conscious  to  the  finger- 
tips; and  this  inherent  quality,  entail- 
ing on  our  poetry  the  inevitable  loss 
of  spontaneity,  ensures  that  whatever 
poets,  of  whatever  excellence,  may  be 
born  to  us  from  the  Shelleian  stoclc,  its 
founder's  spirit  can  take  among  us  no 
reincarnation.  An  age  that  is  ceasing 
to  produce  child-like  children  cannot 
produce  a  Shelley.  For  both  as  poet 
and  man  he  was  essentially  a  child. 

Yet,  just  as  in  the  effete  French 
societv  before  the  Revolution  the 
Queen   played  at  Arcadia,  the    King 


SHELLEY 

played  at  being  a  mechanic,  every 
one  played  at  simplicity  and  univer- 
sal philanthropy,  leaving  for  most 
durable  outcome  of  their  philanthropy 
the  guillotine,  as  the  most  durable  out- 
come of  ours  may  be  execution  by 
electricity; — so  in  our  own  society  the 
talk  of  benevolence  and  the  cult  of 
childhood  are  the  very  fashion  of  the 
hour.  We,  of  this  self-conscious,  incre- 
dulous generation,  sentimentalize  our 
children,  analyse  our  children,  think 
we  are  endowed  with  a  special  capa- 
city to  sympathize  and  identify  our- 
selves with  children;  we  play  at  being 
children.  And  the  result  is  that  we  are 
not  more  child-like,  but  our  children  are 
less  child-like.  It  is  so  tiring  to  stoop  to 
the  child,  so  much  easier  to  lift  the  child 
up  to  you.  Know  you  what  it  is  to  be  a 
child?  It  is  to  be  something  very  diffe- 
rent from  the  man  of  to-day.  It  is  to  have 

a  spirit  yet  streaming  from  the  waters  of 

28 


SHELLEY 

baptism ;  it  is  to  believe  in  love, to  believe 
in  loveliness,  to  believe  in  belief;  it  is  to 
be  so  little  that  the  elves  can  reach  to 
whisper  in  your  ear;  it  is  to  turn  pump- 
kins into  coaches,  and  mice  into  horses, 
lowness  into  loftiness,  and  nothing  into 
everything,  for  each  child  has  its  fairy 
godmother  in  its  own  soul;  it  is  to 
live  in  a  nutshell  and  to  count  your- 
self the  king  of  infinite  space;  it  is 

To  see  a  world  in  a  grain  of  sand, 
And  a  heaven  in  a  wild  flower, 

Hold  infinity  in  the  palm  of  your  hand, 
And  eternity  in  an  hour ; 

it  is  to  know  not  as  yet  that  you  are  un- 
der sentence  of  life,  nor  petition  that  it 
be  commuted  into  death.  When  we  be- 
come conscious  in  dreaming  that  we 
dream,  the  dream  is  on  the  point  of 
breaking;  when  we  become  conscious 
in  living  that  we  live,  the  ill  dream  is 
but  just  beginning.   Now  if  Shelley 

was  but  too  conscious  of  the  dream, 

29 


SHELLEY 

in  other  respects  Dryden's  false  and 
famous  line  might  have  been  applied 
to  him  with  very  much  less  than  its 
usual  untruth."*  To  the  last,  in  a  de- 
gree uncommon  even  among  poets,  he 
retained  the  idiosyncrasy  of  childhood, 
expanded  and  matured  without  dif- 
ferentiation. To  the  last  he  was  the 
enchanted  child. 

This  was,  as  is  well  known,  patent 
in  his  life.  It  is  as  really,  though  per- 
haps less  obviously,  manifest  in  his 
poetry,  the  sincere  effluence  of  his  life. 
And  it  may  not,  therefore,  be  amiss  to 
consider  whether  it  was  conditioned  by 
anything  beyond  his  congenital  nature. 
For  our  part,  we  believe  it  to  have  been 
equally  largely  the  outcome  of  his  early 
and  long  isolation.  Men  given  to  re- 
tirement and  abstract  study  are  notori- 

*  Wordsworth's  adaptation  of  it,  however,  is  true. 
Men  are  not  "  children  of  a  larger  growth,"  but  the 
child  is  father  of  the  man,  since  the  parent  is  only 
partially  reproduced  in  his  offspring. 

SO 


SHELLEY 

ously  liable  to  contrail  a  certain  degree 
of  childlikeness:  and  if  this  be  the  case 
when  we  segregate  a  man,  how  much 
more  when  we  segregate  a  child!  It  is 
when  they  are  taken  into  the  solution 
of  school-life  that  children,  by  the  re- 
ciprocal interchange  of  influence  with 
their  fellows,  undergo  the  series  of 
reactions  which  converts  them  from 
children  into  boys  and  from  boys  into 
men.  The  intermediate  stage  must  be 
traversed  to  reach  the  final  one. 

Now  Shelley  never  could  have  been 
a  man,  for  he  never  was  a  boy.  And 
the  reason  lay  in  the  persecution  which 
overclouded  his  schooldays.  Of  that 
persecution's  effect  upon  him  he  has 
left  us,  in  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  a  pic- 
ture which  to  many  or  most  people 
very  probably  seems  a  poetical  exagge- 
ration; partly  because  Shelley  appears 
to  have  escaped  physical  brutality, 
partly  because  adults  are  inclined  to 

3* 


SHELLEY 

smile  tenderly  at  childish  sorrows 
which  are  not  caused  by  physical  suf- 
fering. That  he  escaped  for  the  most 
part  bodily  violence  is  nothing  to  the 
purpose.  It  is  the  petty  malignant 
annoyance  recurring  hour  by  hour, 
day  by  day,  month  by  month,  until 
its  accumulation  becomes  an  agony;  it 
is  this  which  is  the  most  terrible  wea- 
pon that  boys  have  against  their  fellow 
boy,  who  is  powerless  to  shun  it  be- 
cause, unlike  the  man,  he  has  virtually 
no  privacy.  His  is  the  torture  which 
the  ancients  used,  when  they  anointed 
their  victim  with  honey  and  exposed 
him  naked  to  the  restless  fever  of  the 
flies.  He  is  a  little  St  Sebastian,  sink- 
ing under  the  incessant  flight  of  shafts 
which  skilfully  avoid  the  vital  parts. 

We  do  not,  therefore,  suspect  Shelley 
of  exaggeration:  he  was,  no  doubt,  in 
terrible  misery.  Those  who  think 
otherwise  must  forget  their  own  past. 

3* 


SHELLEY 

Most  people,  we  suppose3  must  forget 
what  they  were  like  when  they  were 
children:  otherwise  they  would  know 
that  the  griefs  of  their  childhood  were 
passionate  abandonment,  dechirants  (to 
use  a  characteristically  favourite  phrase 
of  modern  French  literature)  as  the 
griefs   of   their    maturity.    Children's 
griefs  are  little,  certainly;  but  so  is  the 
child,  so  is  its  endurance,  so  is  its  field 
of  vision,  while  its   nervous  impres- 
sionability is  keener  than  ours.   Grief 
is  a  matter  of  relativity;  the  sorrow 
should  be  estimated  by  its  proportion 
to  the  sorrower;  a  gash  is  as  painful 
to  one  as  an  amputation  to  another. 
Pour  a  puddle  into  a  thimble,  or  an 
Atlantic  into  Etna;  both  thimble  and 
mountain  overflow.  Adult  fools!  would 
not  the  angels  smile  at  our  griefs,  were 
not  angels  too  wise  to  smile  at  them? 
So  beset,  the  child  fled  into  the  tower 
of  his  own  soul,  and  raised  the  draw- 

33  c 


SHELLEY 
bridge.  He  threw  out  a  reserve,  en- 
cysted in  which  he  grew  to  maturity 
unaffected  by  the  intercourses  that 
modify  the  maturity  of  others  into 
the  thing  we  call  a  man.  The  encysted 
child  developed  until  it  reached  years 
of  virility,  until  those  later  Oxford 
days  in  which  Hogg  encountered  it; 
then,  bursting  at  once  from  its  cyst 
and  the  university,  it  swam  into  a 
world  not  illegitimately  perplexed  by 
such  a  whim  of  the  gods.  It  was,  of 
course,  only  the  completeness  and  dura- 
tion of  this  seclusion — lasting  from  the 
gate  of  boyhood  to  the  threshold  of 
youth — which  was  peculiar  to  Shelley. 
Most  poets,  probably,  like  most  saints, 
are  prepared  for  their  mission  by  an 
initial  segregation,  as  the  seed  is  buried 
to  germinate:  before  they  can  utter  the 
oracle  of  poetry,  they  must  first  be  di- 
vided from  the  body  of  men.  It  is  the 
severed  head  that  makes  the  seraph. 

54 


SHELLEY 
Shelley's  life  frequently  exhibits  in 
him  the  magnified  child.  It  is  seen 
in  his  fondness  for  apparently  futile 
amusements,  such  as  the  sailing  of 
paper  boats.  This  was,  in  the  truest 
sense  of  the  word,  child-like ;  not,  as  it  is 
frequently  called  and  considered,  child- 
ish. That  is  to  say,  it  was  not  a  mindless 
triviality,  but  the  genuine  child's  power 
of  investing  little  things  with  imagina- 
tive interest;  the  same  power,  though 
differently  devoted,  which  produced 
much  of  his  poetry.  Very  possibly  in 
the  paper  boat  he  saw  the  magic  bark 
of  Laon  and  Cythna,  or 

That  thinnest  boat 
On  which  the  mother  of  the  months  is  borne 
By  ebbing  night  into  her  lunar  cave. 

In  fact,  if  you  mark  how  favourite  an 
idea,  under  varying  forms,  is  this  in 
his  verse,  you  will  perceive  that  all  the 
charmed  boats  which  glide  down  the 
stream  of  his  poetry  are  but  glorified 

35  C2 


SHELLEY 

resurrections  of  the  little  paper  argosies 
which  trembled  down  the  Isis. 

And  the  child  appeared  no  less  often 
in  Shelley  the  philosopher  than  in 
Shelley  the  idler.  It  is  seen  in  his  re- 
pellent no  less  than  in  his  amiable 
weaknesses;  in  the  unteachable  folly 
of  a  love  that  made  its  goal  its  start- 
ing-point, and  firmly  expected  spiritual 
rest  from  each  new  divinity,  though 
it  had  found  none  from  the  divinities 
antecedent.  For  we  are  clear  that  this 
was  no  mere  straying  of  sensual  appe- 
tite, but  a  straying,  strange  and  de- 
plorable, of  the  spirit;  that  (contrary 
to  what  Mr  Coventry  Patmore  has 
said)  he  left  a  woman  not  because  he 
was  tired  of  her  arms,  but  because  he 
was  tired  of  her  soul.  When  he  found 
Mary  Shelley  wanting,  he  seems  to 
have  fallen  into  the  mistake  of  Words- 
worth, who  complained  in  a  charming 

piece  of  unreasonableness  that  his  wife's 

36 


SHELLEY 

love,  which  had  been  a  fountain,  was 
now  only  a  well: 

Such  change,  and  at  the  very  door 
Of  my  fond  heart,  hath  made  me  poor. 

Wordsworth  probably  learned,  what 
Shelley  was  incapable  of  learning,  that 
love  can  never  permanently  be  a  foun- 
tain. A  living  poet,  in  an  article* 
which  you  almost  fear  to  breathe  upon 
lest  you  should  flutter  some  of  the  frail 
pastel-like  bloom,  has  said  the  thing: 
"Love  itself  has  tidal  moments,  lapses 
and  flows  due  to  the  metrical  rule  of 
the  interior  heart."  Elementary  reason 
should  proclaim  this  true.  Love  is  an 
afFeftion,  its  display  an  emotion:  love 
is  the  air,  its  display  is  the  wind.  An 
affection  may  be  constant;  an  emotion 
can  no  more  be  constant  than  the  wind 
can  constantly  blow.  All,  therefore,  that 
a  man  can  reasonably  ask  of  his  wife  is 
that  her  love  should  be  indeed  a  well. 

*  The  Rhythm  of  Life,  by  Alice  Meynell. 
37 


SHELLEY 
A  well;  but  a  Bethesda-well,into  which 
from  time  to  time  the  angel  of  tender- 
ness descends  to  trouble  the  waters  for 
the  healing  of  the  beloved.  Such  a  love 
Shelley's  second  wife  appears  unques- 
tionably to  have  given  him.Nay5she  was 
content  that  he  should  veer  while  she 
remained  true;  she  companioned  him 
intellectually,  shared  his  views,  entered 
into  his  aspirations,  and  yet — yet,  even 
at  the  date  of  Epipsychidion,  the  foolish 
child,  her  husband,  assigned  her  the  part 
of  moon  to  Emilia  Viviani's  sun,  and 
lamented  that  he  was  barred  from  final, 
certain,  irreversible  happiness  by  a  cold 
and  callous  society.  Yet  few  poets 
were  so  mated  before,  and  no  poet  was 
so  mated  afterwards,  until  Browning 
stooped  and  picked  up  a  fair-coined  soul 
that  lay  rusting  in  a  pool  of  tears. 

In  truth,  his  very  unhappiness  and 
discontent  with  life,  in  so  far  as  it  was 

not  the  inevitable  penalty  of  the  ethical 

38 


SHELLEY 

anarch,  can  only  be  ascribed  to  this  same 
childlike  irrationality — though  in  such 
a  form  it  is  irrationality  hardly  peculiar 
to  Shelley.  Pity,  if  you  will,  his  spiritual 
ruins,  and  the  neglected  early  training 
which  was  largely  their  cause;  but  the 
pity  due  to  his  outward  circumstances 
has  been  strangely  exaggerated.  The 
obloquy  from  which  he  suffered  he 
deliberately  and  wantonly  courted.  For 
the  rest,  his  lot  was  one  that  many  a 
young  poet  might  envy.  He  had  faith- 
ful friends,  a  faithful  wife,  an  income 
small  but  assured.  Poverty  never  dic- 
tated to  his  pen;  the  designs  on  his 
bright  imagination  were  never  etched 
by  the  sharp  fumes  of  necessity. 

If,  as  has  chanced  to  others — as 
chanced,  for  example,  to  Mangan — 
outcast  from  home,  health  and  hope, 
with  a  charred  past  and  a  bleared  future, 
an  anchorite  without  detachment  and 
self -cloistered  without  self -sufficingness, 

39 


SHELLEY 

deposed  from  a  world  which  he  had  not 
abdicated,  pierced  with  thorns  which 
formed  no  crown,  a  poet  hopeless  of  the 
bays,  and  a  martyr  hopeless  of  the  palm, 
a  land  cursed  against  the  dews  of  love, 
an  exile  banned  and  proscribed  even 
from  the  innocent  arms  of  childhood 
— he  were  burning  helpless  at  the  stake 
of  his  unquenchable  heart,  then  he 
might  have  been  inconsolable,  then 
might  he  have  cast  the  gorge  at  life, 
then  have  cowered  in  the  darkening 
chamber  of  his  being,  tapestried  with 
mouldering  hopes,  and  hearkened  to 
the  winds  that  swept  across  the  illimit- 
able wastes  of  death.  But  no  such  hapless 
lot  was  Shelley's  as  that  of  his  own  con- 
temporaries— Keats,  half-chewed  in  the 
jaws  of  London  and  spit  dying  on  to 
Italy;  De  Quincey,  who,  if  he  escaped, 
escaped  rent  and  maimed  from  those 
cruel  jaws ;  Coleridge,  whom  they  dully 

mumbled  for  the  major  portion  of  his 

4o 


SHELLEY 
life.  Shelley  had  competence,  poetry, 
love;  yet  he  wailed  that  he  could  lie 
down  like  a  tired  child  and  weep  away 
his  life  of  care!  Is  it  ever  so  with  you, 
sad  brother;  is  it  ever  so  with  me?  and 
is  there  no  drinking  of  pearls  except  thev 
be  dissolved  in  biting  tears?  "Which  of 
us  has  his  desire, or  having  it  is  satisfied?" 
It  is  true  that  he  shared  the  fate  of 
nearly  all  the  great  poets  contemporary 
with  him,  in  being  unappreciated.  Like 
them,   he   suffered  from   critics   who 
were  for  ever  shearing  the  wild  tresses 
of  poetry   between  rusty   rules,   who 
could  never  see  a  literary  bough  pro- 
ject beyond  the  trim  level  of  its  day 
but  they  must  lop  it  with  a  crooked 
criticism,  who  kept  indomitably  plant- 
ing in  the  defile  of  fame  the  "  estab- 
lished canons  "  that  had  been  spiked 
by  poet  after  poet.  But  we  decline  to 
believe  that  a  singer  of  Shelley's  calibre 
could  be  seriously  grieved  by  want  of 

41 


SHELLEY 
vogue.  Not  that  we  suppose  him  to 
have  found  consolation  in  that  sense- 
less superstition,  "  the  applause  of  pos- 
terity. "  Posterity,  posterity  !  which 
goes  to  Rome,  weeps  large-sized  tears, 
carves  beautiful  inscriptions,  over  the 
tomb  of  Keats;  and  the  worm  must 
wriggle  her  curtsey  to  it  all,  since  the 
dead  boy,  wherever  he  be,  has  quite 
other  gear  to  tend.  Never  a  bone  less 
dry  for  all  the  tears! 

A  poet  must  to  some  extent  be  a 
chameleon,  and  feed  on  air.  But  it  need 
not  be  the  musty  breath  of  the  multi- 
tude. He  can  find  his  needful  support 
in  the  judgement  of  those  whose  judge- 
ment he  knows  valuable,  and  such  sup- 
port Shelley  had: 

La  gloire 
Ne  compte  pas  toujours  les  voix; 

Elle  les  pese  quelquefois. 

Yet  if  this  might  be  needful  to  him  as 
support,  neither  this,  nor  the  applause 

42 


SHELLEY 

of  the  present,  nor  the  applause  of 
posterity,  could  have  been  needful  to 
him  as  motive:  the  one  all-sufficing 
motive  for  a  great  poet's  singing  is  that 
expressed  by  Keats: 

I  was  taught  in  Paradise 

To  ease  my  breast  of  melodies. 

Precisely  so.  The  overcharged  breast 
can  find  no  ease  but  in  suckling  the 
baby-song.  No  enmity  of  outward  cir- 
cumstances, therefore,  but  his  own 
nature,  was  responsible  for  Shellev's 
doom. 

A  being  with  so  much  about  it  of 
childlike  unreasonableness,  and  vet 
withal  so  much  of  the  beautiful  attrac- 
tion luminous  in  a  child's  sweet  un- 
reasonableness, would  seem  fore-fated 
by  its  very  essence  to  the  transience 
of  the  bubble  and  the  rainbow,  of  all 
things  filmy  and  fair.  Did  some  shadow 
of  this  destiny  bear  part  in  his  sad- 
ness? Certain  it  is  that,  by  a  curious 

+3 


SHELLEY 
chance,  he  himself  in  Julian  and  Mad- 
dalo  jestingly  foretold  the  manner  of 
his  end.  "  0  ho!  You  talk  as  in  years 
past,"  said  Maddalo  (Byron)  to  Julian 
(Shelley) ;  "If  you  can't  swim,  Beware 
of    Providence."    Did    no    unearthly 
dixisti  sound  in  his  ears  as  he  wrote  it? 
But  a  brief  while,  and  Shelley,  who 
could  not  swim,  was  weltering  on  the 
waters  of  Lerici.  We  know  not  how 
this  may  affect  others,  but  over  us  it 
is  a  coincidence  which  has  long  tyran- 
nized with   an   absorbing   inveteracy 
of    impression     (strengthened    rather 
than  diminished  by  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  levity  of  the  utterance  and 
its  fatal  fulfilment) — thus  to  behold, 
heralding  itself  in  warning  mockery 
through  the  very  lips  of  its  predestined 
victim,  the  Doom  upon  whose  breath 
his  locks  were  lifting  along  the  coasts 
of  Campania.  The  death  which  he  had 
prophesied  came  upon  him,  and  Spez- 


SHELLEY 
zia  enrolled  another  name  among  the 
mournful  Marcelli  of  our  tongue; 
Venetian  glasses  which  foamed  and 
burst  before  the  poisoned  wine  of  life 
had  risen  to  their  brims. 


Coming  to  Shelley's  poetry,  we  peep 
over  the  wild  mask  of  revolutionary 
metaphysics,  and  we  see  the  winsome 
face  of  the  child.  Perhaps  none  of  his 
poems  is  more  purely  and  typically 
Shelleian  than  The  Cloudy  and  it  is 
interesting  to  note  how  essentiallv  it 
springs  from  the  faculty  of  make- 
believe.  The  same  thing  is  conspi- 
cuous, though  less  purely  conspicuous, 
throughout  his  singing ;  it  is  the  child's 
faculty  of  make-believe  raised  to  the 
72th  power.  He  is  still  at  play,  save  only 
that  his  play  is  such  as  manhood  stops 
to  watch,  and  his  playthings  are  those 
which  the  gods  give  their  children. 
The  universe  is  his  box  of  toys.  He 

4-5 


\y 


SHELLEY 

dabbles  his  fingers  in  the  day-fall.  He 

is   gold-dusty  with  tumbling   amidst 

the  stars.  He  makes  bright  mischief 

with  the  moon.  The  meteors  nuzzle 

their  noses  in  his  hand.  He  teases  into 

growling  the  kennelled  thunder,  and 

laughs  at  the  shaking  of  its  fiery  chain. 

He  dances  in  and  out  of  the  gates  of 

heaven:   its  floor  is  littered  with  his 

broken  fancies.  He  runs  wild  over  the 

fields  of  ether.  He  chases  the  rolling 

world.  He  gets  between  the  feet  of 

the  horses  of  the  sun.  He  stands  in  the 

lap  of  patient  Nature,  and  twines  her 

loosened  tresses  after  a  hundred  wilful 

fashions,  to   see  how   she   will  look 

nicest  in  his  song. 

This  it  was  which,  in  spite  of  his 

essentially  modern  character  as  a  singer, 

qualified   Shelley  to    be    the  poet  of 

Prometheus  Unbound,  for  it  made  him, 

in   the  truest  sense   of   the   word,    a 

mythological     poet.     This     childlike 

46 


SHELLEY 

quality  assimilated  him  to  the  childlike 
peoples  among  whom  mythologies 
have  their  rise.  Those  Nature  myths 
which,  according  to  many,  are  the 
basis  of  all  mythology,  are  likewise 
the  very  basis  of  Shelley's  poetry.  The 
lark  that  is  the  gossip  of  heaven,  the 
winds  that  pluck  the  grey  from  the 
beards  of  the  billows,  the  clouds  that 
are  snorted  from  the  sea's  broad  nos- 
tril, all  the  elemental  spirits  of  Nature, 
take  from  his  verse  perpetual  incarna- 
tion and  reincarnation,  pass  in  a  thou- 
sand glorious  transmigrations  through 
the  radiant  forms  of  his  imagery. 

Thus,  but  not  in  the  Wordsworthian 
sense,  he  is  a  veritable  poet  of  Nature. 
For  with  Nature  the  Wordsworthians 
will  admit  no  tampering:  they  exact 
the  direct  interpretative  reproduction 
of  her;  that  the  poet  should  follow  her 
as  a  mistress,  not  use  her  as  a  handmaid. 
To  such  following  of  Nature,  Shelley 

47 


SHELLEY 

felt  no  call.  He  saw  in  her  not  a  pic- 
ture set  for  his  copying,  but  a  palette 
set  for  his  brush;  not  a  habitation  pre- 
pared for  his  inhabiting,  but  a  Coliseum 
whence  he  might  quarry  stones  for  his 
own  palaces.  Even  in  his  descriptive 
passages  the  dream-characler  of  his 
scenery  is  notorious;  it  is  not  the  clear, 
recognizable  scenery  of  Wordsworth, 
but  a  landscape  that  hovers  athwart 
the  heat  and  haze  arising  from  his 
crackling  fantasies.  The  materials  for 
such  visionary  Edens  have  evidently 
been  accumulated  from  direct  experi- 
ence, but  they  are  recomposed  by  him 
into  such  scenes  as  never  mortal  eye 
beheld.  "Don't  you  wish  you  had?" 
as  Turner  said.  The  one  justification 
for  classing  Shelley  with  the  Lake 
poet  is  that  he  loved  Nature  with  a 
love  even  more  passionate,  though 
perhaps  less  profound.  Wordsworth's 
Nightingale  and  Stockdove  sums  up  the 

+8 


SHELLEY 
contrast  between  the  two,  as  though 
it  had  been  wrritten  for  such  a  purpose, 
Shelley  is  the  "creature  of  ebullient 
heart,"  who 

Sings  as  if  the  god  of  wine 
Had  helped  him  to  a  valentine. 

Wordsworth's  is  the 

— Love  with  quiet  blending, 
Slow  to  begin  and  never  ending, 

the  "serious  faith  and  inward  glee." 

But  if  Shelley,  instead  of  culling 
Nature,  crossed  with  its  pollen  the 
blossoms  of  his  own  soul,  that  Babylo- 
nian garden  is  his  marvellous  and  best 
apology.  For  astounding  figurative 
opulence  he  yields  only  to  Shakespeare, 
and  even  to  Shakespeare  not  in  abso- 
lute fecundity  but  in  range  of  images. 
The  sources  of  his  figurative  wealth 
are  specialized,  while  the  sources  of 
Shakespeare's  are  universal.  It  would 
have   been  as  conscious  an  effort  for 

49  d 


SHELLEY 

him  to  speak  without  figure  as  it  is  for 
most  men  to  speak  with  figure.  Sus- 
pended in  the  dripping  well  of  his 
imagination  the  commonest  object  be- 
comes encrusted  with  imagery.  Herein 
again  he  deviates  from  the  true  Nature 
poet,  the  normal  Wordsworth  type  of 
Nature  poet:  imagery  was  to  him  not 
a  mere  means  of  expression,  not  even 
a  mere  means  of  adornment;  it  was  a 
delight  for  its  own  sake. 

And  herein  we  find  the  trail  by 
which  we  would  classify  him.  He  be- 
longs to  a  school  of  which  not  impossi- 
bly he  may  hardly  have  read  a  line — the 
Metaphysical  School.  To  alarge  extent, 
he  is  what  the  Metaphysical  School 
should  have  been.  That  school  was  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  poetry  trying  for  a  range. 
Shelley  is  the  range  found.  Crashaw 
and  Shelley  sprang  from  the  same  seed; 
but  in  the  one  case  the  seed  was  choked 
with  thorns,  in  the  other  case  it  fell 

5° 


SHELLEY 

on  good  ground.  The  Metaphysical 
School  was  in  its  direct"  results  an 
abortive  movement,  though  indirectly 
much  came  of  it — for  Drvden  came 
of  it.  Dryden,  to  a  greater  extent  than 
is  (we  imagine)  generally  perceived, 
was  Cowley  systematized;  and  Cowley, 
who  sank  into  the  arms  of  Dryden, 
rose  from  the  lap  of  Donne. 

But  the  movement  was  so  abortive 
that  few  will  thank  us  for  connectine 
with  it  the  name  of  Shelley.  This  is 
because  to  most  people  the  Metaphy- 
sical School  means  Donne,  whereas  it 
ought  to  mean  Crashaw.  We  judge 
the  direction  of  a  development  by  its 
highest  form,  though  that  form  may 
have  been  produced  but  once,  and  pro- 
duced imperfectly.  Now  the  highest 
product  of  the  Metaphysical  School 
was  Crashaw,  and  Crashaw  was  a 
Shelley  manque;  he  never  reached  the 
Promised   Land,   but    he   had   fervid 

51  1>2 


SHELLEY 

visions  of  it.  The  Metaphysical  School, 
like  Shelley,  loved  imagery  for  its  own 
sake:  and  how  beautiful  a  thing  the 
frank  toying  with  imagery  may  be,  let 
The  Skylark  and  The  Cloud  witness.  It 
is  only  evil  when  the  poet,  on  the 
straight  way  to  a  fixed  object,  lags 
continually  from  the  path  to  play. 
This  is  commendable  neither  in  poet 
nor  errand-boy.  The  Metaphysical 
School  failed,  not  because  it  toyed 
with  imagery,  but  because  it  toyed 
with  it  frostily.  To  sport  with  the 
tangles  of  Nesra's  hair  may  be  trivial 
idleness  or  caressing  tenderness,  exactly 
as  your  relation  to  Neasra  is  that  of 
heartless  gallantry  or  of  love.  So  you 
may  toy  with  imagery  in  mere  intel- 
lectual ingenuity,  and  then  you  might 
as  well  go  write  acrostics:  or  you  may 
toy  with  it  in  raptures,  and  then  you 
may  write  a  Sensitive  cPla?:t.  In  fact, 
the    Metaphysical    poets  when    they 

5* 


SHELLEY 

went  astray  cannot  be  said  to  have 
done  anything  so  dainty  as  is  implied 
by  toying  with  imagery.  They  cut  it  into 
shapes  with  a  pair  of  scissors.  From  all 
such  danger  Shelley  was  saved  by  his 
passionate  spontaneity;  no  trappings 
are  too  splendid  for  the  swift  steeds  of 
sunrise.  His  sword-hilt  may  be  rough 
with  jewels,  but  it  is  the  hilt  of  an 
Excalibur.  His  thoughts  scorch 
through  all  the  folds  of  expression. 
His  cloth  of  gold  bursts  at  the  flexures, 
and  shows  the  naked  poetry. 

It  is  this  gift  of  not  merely  embody- 
ing but  apprehending  everything  in 
figure  which  co-operates  towards  cre- 
ating one  of  his  rarest  characteristics, 
so  almost  preternaturally  developed  in 
no  other  poet,  namely,  his  well-known 
power  to  condense  the  most  hydro- 
genic  abstraction.  Science  can  now 
educe  threads  of  such  exquisite  tenuity 

S3 


SHELLEY 

that  onlv  the  feet  of  the  tiniest  infant- 

J 

spiders  can  ascend  them;  but  up  the 
filmiest  insubstantialitv  Shelley  runs 
with  agile  ease.  To  him,  in  truth, 
nothing  is  abstract.  The  dustiest  ab- 
stractions 

Start,  and  tremble  under  his  fcQty 
And  blossom  in  purple  and  red. 

The  coldest  moon  of  an  idea  rises 
haloed  through  his  vaporous  imagina- 
tion. The  dimmest-sparked  chip  of  a 
conception  blazes  and  scintillates  in 
the  subtile  oxygen  of  his  mind.  The 
most  wrinkled  yEson  of  an  abstruseness 
leaps  rosy  out  of  his  bubbling  genius. 
In  a  more  intensified  signification  than 
it  is  probable  that  Shakespeare  dreamed 
of,  Shelley  gives  to  airy  nothing  a  local 
habitation  and  a  name.  Here  afresh 
he  touches  the  Metaphysical  School, 
whose  very  title  was  drawn  from  this 
habitual  pursuit  of  abstractions,  and 
who  failed  in  that  pursuit  from   the 

54 


SHELLEY 

one  cause  omnipresent  with  them, 
because  in  all  their  poetic'smithv  they 
had  left  never  a  place  for  a  forge.  Thev 
laid  their  fancies  chill  on  the  anvil. 
Crashaw,  indeed,  partially  anticipated 
Shelley's  success,  and  yet  further  did 
a  later  poet,  so  much  further  that  we 
find  it  difficult  to  understand  why  a 
generation  that  worships  Shelley  should 
be  reviving  Gray,  yet  almost  forget  the 
name  of  Collins.  The  generality  of 
readers,  when  they  know  him  at  all, 
usuallv  know  him  bv  his  Ode  on  the 
Passions,  In  this,  despite  its  beautv, 
there  is  still  a  soupgan  of  formalism,  a 
lingering  trace  of  powder  from  the  eigh- 
teenth-century periwig,  dimming  the 
bright  locks  of  poetry.  Only  theliterary 
student  reads  that  little  masterpiece, 
the  Ode  to  Evening,  which  sometimes 
heralds  the  Shelleian  strain,  while  other 
passages  are  the  sole  things  in  the  lan- 
guage comparable  to  the  miniatures  of 

55 


SHELLEY 
11  Tenseroso.  Crashaw,  Collins,  Shelley 
— three  ricochets  of  the  one  pebble, 
three  jets  from  three  bounds  of  the 
one  Pegasus!  Collins's  Pity,  "with 
eyes  of  dewy  light,"  is  near  of  kin  to 
Shelley's  Sleep,  "the  filmy-eyed";  and 
the  "shadowy  tribes  of  mind"  are 
the  lineal  progenitors  of  "Thought's 
crowned  powers."  This,  however,  is 
personification,  wherein  both  Collins 
and  Shelley  build  on  Spenser:  the  diz- 
zying achievement  to  which  the 
modern  poet  carried  personification 
accounts  for  but  a  moiety,  if  a  large 
moiety,  of  his  vivifying  power  over 
abstractions.  Take  the  passage  (already 
alluded  to)  in  that  glorious  chorus 
telling  how  the  Hours  come 

From  the  temples  high 

Of  man's  ear  and  eye 
Roofed  over  Sculpture  and  Poetry, 

From  the  skiey  towers 

Where  Thought's  crowned  powers 
Sit  watching  your  flight,  ye  happy  Hours. 


SHELLEY 

Our  feet  now,  every  palm, 

Are  sandalled  with  calm, 
And  the  dew  of  our  wings  is  a  rain  of  balm; 

And  within  our  eves 

The  human  love  lies 
Which  makes  all  it  gazes  on  Paradise. 

Any  partial  explanation  will  break  in 
our  hands  before  it  reaches  the  root  of 
such  a  power.  The  root,  we  take  it,  is 
this.  He  had  an  instinctive  perception 
(immense  in  range  and  fertility,  aston- 
ishing for  its  delicate  intuition)  of  the 
underlying  analogies,  the  secret  subter- 
ranean passages,  between  matter  and 
soul;  the  chromatic  scales,  whereat  we 
dimly  guess,  by  which  the  Almighty 
modulates  through  all  the  keys  of  crea- 
tion. Because,  the  more  we  consider  it, 
the  more  likely  does  it  appear  that 
Nature  is  but  an  imperfect  aclress, 
whose  constant  changes  of  dress  never 
change  her  manner  and  method,  who 
is  the  same  in  all  her  parts. 

To  Shelley's  ethereal  vision  the  most 

57 


SHELLEY 

rarified  mentalor  spiritual  music  traced 
its  beautiful  corresponding  forms  on  the 
sand  of  outward  things.  He  stood  thus 
at  the  very  junction-lines  of  the  visi- 
ble and  invisible,  and  could  shift  the 
points  as  he  willed.  His  thoughts  be- 
came a  mounted  infantry,  passing  with 
baffling  swiftness  from  horse  to  foot  or 
foot  to  horse.  He  could  express  as  he 
listed  the  material  and  the  immaterial 
in  terms  of  each  other.  Never  has  a 
poet  in  the  past  rivalled  him  as  regards 
this  gift,  and  hardly  will  any  poet  rival 
him  as  regards  it  in  the  future:  men  are 
like  first  to  see  the  promised  doom  lay 
its  hand  on  the  tree  of  heaven  and 
shake  down  the  golden  leaves.* 

The  finest  specimens  of  this  faculty 
are  probably  to  be  sought  in  that 
Shelleian  treasury, Prometheus  Unbound. 
It  is  unquestionably  the  greatest  and 

*"And  the  stars  of  heaven  fell  unto  the  earth,  even 
as  a  fig-tree  casteth  her  untimely  figs,  when  she  is  shaken 
of  a  mighty  wind  "  (Rev.  vi,  13). 

53 


SHELLEY 

most  prodigal  exhibition  of  Shelley's 
powers,  this  amazing  lyric  world, 
where  immortal  clarities  sigh  past  in 
the  perfumes  of  the  blossoms,  populate 
the  breathings  of  the  breeze,  throng 
and  twinkle  in  the  leaves  that  twirl 
upon  the  bough;  where  the  very  grass 
is  all  a-rustle  with  lovely  spirit-things, 
and  a  weeping  mist  of  music  fills  the 
air.  The  final  scenes  especially  are  such 
a  Bacchic  reel  and  rout  and  revelry  of 
beautv  as  leaves  one  staggered  and 
giddy;  poetry  is  spilt  like  wine,  music 
runs  to  drunken  waste.  The  choruses 
sweep  down  the  wind,  tirelessly,  flight 
after  flight,  till  the  breathless  soul 
almost  cries  for  respite  from  the  un- 
rolling splendours.  Yet  these  scenes,  so 
wonderful  from  a  purely  poetical  stand- 
point that  no  one  could  wish  them 
away,  are  (to  our  humble  thinking) 
nevertheless  the  artistic  error  of  the 
poem.  Abstractedly,  the  development 

59 


SHELLEY 

of  Shelley's  idea  required  that  he  should 
show  the  earthly  paradise  which  was 
to  follow  the  fall  of  Zeus.  But  dra- 
matically with  that  fall  the  action 
ceases,  and  the  drama  should  have 
ceased  with  it.  A  final  chorus,  or  choral 
series,  of  rejoicings  (such  as  does  ulti- 
mately end  the  drama  where  Prome- 
theus appears  on  the  scene)  would  have 
been  legitimate  enough.  Instead,  how- 
ever, the  bewildered  reader  finds  the 
drama  unfolding  itself  through  scene 
after  scene  which  leaves  the  action 
precisely  where  it  found  it,  because 
there  is  no  longer  an  action  to  advance. 
It  is  as  if  the  choral  finale  of  an  opera 
were  prolonged  through  two  a£ts. 

We  have,  nevertheless,  called  Pro- 
metheus Shelley's  greatest  poem  because 
it  is  the  most  comprehensive  storehouse 
of  his  power.  Were  we  asked  to  name 
the  most^r/Jr/among  his  longer  efforts, 
we  should  name  the  poem  in  which  he 


60 


SHELLEY 

lamented  Keats;  under  the  shed  petals 
of  his  lovely  fancy  giving  the  slain  bird 
a  silken  burial.  Seldom  is  the  death  of  a 
poet  mourned  in  true  poetry.  Not  often 
is  the  singer  coffined  in  laurel-wood. 
Among  the  very  few  exceptions  to  such 
a  rule,  the  greatest  is  Adonais.  In  the 
English  language  only  Lycidas  competes 
with  it;  and  when  we  prefer  Adonais  to 
Lycidas,  we  are  following  the  precedent 
set  in  the  case  of  Cicero :  Adonais  is  the 
longer.  As  regards  command  over  ab- 
straction, it  is  no  less  characteristically 
ShelleianthanPrtfw^T/j-.  It  is  through- 
out a  series  of  abstractions  vitalized  with 
daring  exquisiteness,  from 

Morning  sought 
Her  eastern  watch-tower,  and  her  hair  unbound, 
Wet  with  the  tears  which  should  adorn  the  ground, 
Dimmed  the  aerial  eyes  that  kindle  day, 

to  the  Dreams  that  were  the  flock  of 
the  dead  shepherd, 

Whom  near  the  streams 
Of  his  young  spirit  he  kept; 

61 


SHELLEY 

of  whom  one  sees,  as  she  hangs  mourn- 
ing over  him, 

Upon  the  silken  fringe  of  his  fair  eyes 

A  tear  some  Dream  has  loosened  from  his  brain! 

Lost  ang-el  of  a  ruined  Paradise! 

O 

She  knew  not  'twas  her  own,  as  with  no  stain 
She  faded  like  a  cloud  that  hath  outwept  its  rain. 

In  the  solar  spectrum,  beyond  the 
extreme  red  and  extreme  viokt  rays,  are 
whole  series  of  colours,  demonstrable, 
but  imperceptible  to  gross  human 
vision.  Such  writing  as  this  we  have 
quoted  renders  visible  the  invisibilities 
of  imaginative  colour. 

One  thing  prevents  Adonais  from 
being  ideally  perfect:  its  lack  of  Chris- 
tian hope.  Yet  we  remember  well  the 
writer  of  a  popular  memoir  on  Keats 
proposing  as  "the  best  consolation  for 
the  mind  pained  by  this  sad  record" 
Shelley's  inexpressibly  sad  exposition 
of  Pantheistic  immortality: 

He  is  a  portion  of  that  loveliness 
Which  once  he  made  more  lovely,  etc. 
6z 


SHELLEY 
What  utter  desolation  can  it  be  that 
discerns  comfort  in  this  hope,whose  wan 
countenance  is  as  the  countenance  of  a 
despair  ?  Nay, was  not  indeed  wanhopetht 
Saxon  for  despair?  What  deepest  depth 
of  agony  is  it  that  finds  consolation  in 
this  immortality:  an  immortality  which 
thrusts  you  into  death,  the  maw  of 
Nature,  that  your  dissolved  elements 
may  circulate  through  her  veins? 

Yet  such,  the  poet  tells  me,  is  my 
sole  balm  for  the  hurts  of  life.  I  am  as 
the  vocal  breath  floating  from  an  organ. 
I  too  shall  fade  on  the  winds,  a  cadence 
soon  forgotten.  So  I  dissolve  and  die, 
and  am  lost  in  the  ears  of  men:  the 
particles  of  my  being  twine  in  newer 
melodies,  and  from  my  one  death  arise 
a  hundred  lives.  Why,  through  the 
thin  partition  of  this  consolation  Pan- 
theism can  hear  the  groans  of  its  neigh- 
bour,Pessimism.  Better  almost  the  black 
resignation  which  the  fatalist  draws 

63 


SHELLEY 

from  his  own  hopelessness,  from  the 
fierce  kisses  of  misery  that  hiss  against 
his  tears. 

With  some  gleams,  it  is  true,  of  more 
than  mock  solace,  Adonais  is  lighted; 
but  they  are  obtainedby  implicitly  assu- 
ming the  personal  immortality  which 
the  poem  explicitly  denies;  as  when, 
for  instance,  to  greet  the  dead  youth, 

The  inheritors  of  unfulfilled  renown 

Rose  from  their  seats,  built  beyond  mortal  thought 

Far  in  the  unapparent. 

And  again  the  final  stanza  of  the  poem: 

The  breath  whose  might  I  have  invoked  in  sone 

Descends  on  me;  my  spirit's  bark  is  driven 

Far  from  the  shore,  far  from  the  trembling  throng 

Whose  sails  were  never  to  the  tempest  given: 

The  massy  earth,  the  sphered  skies  are  riven; 

I  am  borne  darklv,  fearfully  afar, 

Where,  burning  through  the  inmost  veil  of  heaven, 

The  soul  of  Adonais  like  a  star 

Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  eternal  are. 

The  soul  of  Adonais  ? — Adonais,  who  is 
but 

A  portion  of  that  loveliness 
Which  once  he  made  more  lovely. 

64 


SHELLEY 
After  all,  to  finish  where  we  began, 
perhaps  the  poems  on  which  the  lover 
of  Shelley  leans  most  lovingly,  which 
he  has  oftenest  in  his  mind,  which  best 
represent  Shelley  to  him,  and  which  he 
instinctively  reverts  to  when  Shelley's 
name  is  mentioned,  are  some  of  the 
shorter  poems  and  detached  lyrics.  Here 
Shelley  forgets  for  a  while  all  that  ever 
makes  his  verse  turbid;  forgets  that  he 
is  anything  but  a  poet,  forgets  some- 
times that  he  is  anything  but  a  child; 
lies  back  in  his  skiff,  and  looks  at  the 
clouds.  He  plays  truant  from  earth,  slips 
through  the  wicket  of  fancy  into 
heaven's -meadow,  and  goes  gathering 
stars.  Here  we  have  that  absolute  virgin- 
gold  of  song  which  is  the  scarcest 
among  human  products,  andfor  which 
we  can  go  to  but  three  poets — Cole- 
ridge, Shelley,  Chopin,*  and  perhaps 

•Such  analogies  between  masters  in  sister-arts  are 
often  interesting.  In  some  respects,  is  not  Brahms  the 
Browning  of  music? 

65  5 


SHELLEY 

we  should  add  Keats: — Christabel  and 
Kubla-YJian;  The  Skylark,  The  Cloud, 
and  The  Sensitive  Plant  (in  its  first  two 
parts) ;  The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes  and  The 
Nightingale;  certain  of  the  Nocturnes  ; 
these  things  make  very  quintessential- 
ized  loveliness.  It  is  attar  of  poetry. 

Remark,  as  a  thing  worth  remark- 
ing, that,  although  Shelley's  diction  is 
at  other  times  singularly  rich,  it  ceases 
in  these  poems  to  be  rich,  or  to  obtrude 
itself  at  all;  it  is  imperceptible;  his 
Muse  has  become  a  veritable  Echo, 
whose  body  has  dissolved  from  about 
her  voice.  Indeed,  when  his  diction  is 
richest,  nevertheless  the  poetry  so 
dominates  the  expression  that  we  only 
feel  the  latter  as  an  atmosphere  until 
we  are  satiated  with  the  former;  then 
we  discover  with  surprise  to  how  im- 
perial a  vesture  we  had  been  blinded 
by  gazing  on  the  face  of  his  song.  A 
lesson,  this,  deserving  to  be  conned  by 

66 


SHELLEY 

a  generation  so  opposite  in  tendency  as 
our  own:  a  lesson  that  in  poetry,  as  in 
the  Kingdom  of  God,  we  should  not 
take  thought  too  greatly  wherewith 
we  shall  be  clothed,  but  seek  first*  the 
spirit,  and  all  these  things  wrill  be  added 
unto  us. 

On  the  marvellous  music  of  Shelley's 
verse  we  need  not  dwell,  except  to  note 
that  he  avoids  that  metronomic  beat 
of  rhythm  which  Edgar  Poe  intro- 
duced into  modern  lyric  measures,  as 
Pope  introduced  it  into  the  rhyming 
heroics  of  his  dav.  Our  varied  metres 
are  becoming  as  painfully  over-polished 
as  Pope's  one  metre.  Shelley  could  at 
need  sacrifice  smoothness  to  fitness.  He 
could  write  an  anapaest  that  would  send 
Mr  Swinburne  into  strong  shudders 
(e.g.,  "stream  did  glide")  when  he  in- 
stinctively felt  that  by  so  forgoing  the 
more    obvious    music   of    melody   he 

*  Seeker;/,  not  seek  only. 

67  E2 


SHELLEY 

would  better  secure  the  higher  music 
of  harmony.  If  we  have  to  add  that  in 
other  ways  he  was  far  from  escaping 
the  defects  of  his  merits,  and  would 
sometimes  have  to  acknowledge  that 
his  Nilotic  flood  too  often  overflowed 
its  banks,  what  is  this  but  saying  that 
he  died  young? 

It  may  be  thought  that  in  our  casual 
comments  on  Shelley's  life  we  have 
been  blind  to  its  evil  side.  That,  how- 
ever, is  not  the  case.  We  see  clearly 
that  he  committed  grave  sins,  and  one 
cruel  crime;  but  we  remember  also 
that  he  was  an  Atheist  from  his  boy- 
hood; we  reflect  how  gross  must  have 
been  the  moral  neglect  in  the  training 
of  a  child  who  could  bt  an  Atheist  from 
his  boyhood:  and  we  decline  to  judge 
so  unhappy  a  being  by  the  rules  which 
we  should  apply  to  a  Catholic.  It  seems 

to  us  that  Shelley  was  struggling — 

62 


SHELLEY 

blindly,  weakly,  stumblingly,  but  still 
struggling  —  towards  higher  things. 
His  Pantheism  is  an  indication  of  it. 
Pantheism  is  a  half-way  house,  and 
marks  ascent  or  descent  according  to 
the  direction  from  which  it  is  ap- 
proached. Now  Shelley  came  to  it  from 
absolute  Atheism;  therefore  in  his  case 
it  meant  rise.  Again,  his  poetry  alone 
would  lead  us  to  the  same  conclusion, 
for  we  do  not  believe  that  a  truly  cor- 
rupted spirit  can  write  consistently 
ethereal  poetry.  We  should  believe  in 
nothing,  if  we  believed  that,  for  it 
would  be  the  consecration  of  a  lie. 
Poetry  is  a  thermometer:  by  taking 
its  average  height  you  can  estimate 
the  normal  temperature  of  its  writer's 
mind.  The  devil  can  do  many  things. 
But  the  devil  cannot  write  poetry.  He 
may  mar  a  poet,  but  he  cannot  make 
a  poet.    Among   all   the   temptations 

wherewith   he  tempted   St  Anthony, 

69 


SHELLEY 

though  we  have  often  seen  it  stated 
that  he  howled,  we  have  never  seen  it 
stated  that  he  sang. 

Shelley's  anarchic  principles  were  as 
a  rule  held  by  him  with  some  misdi- 
rected view  to  truth.  He  disbelieved  in 
kings.  And  is  it  not  a  mere  fact — regret 
it  if  you  will — that  in  all  European 
countries,  except  two,  monarchs  are  a 
mere  survival,  the  obsolete  buttons  on 
the  coat-tails  of  rule,  which  serve  no 
purpose  but  to  be  continually  coming 
off?  It  is  a  miserable  thing  to  note  how 
every  little  Balkan  State,  having  ob- 
tained liberty  (save  the  mark!)  by  Act 
of  Congress,  straightway  proceeds  to 
secure  the  service  of  a  professional 
king.  These  gentlemen  are  plentiful  in 
Europe.  They  are  the  "noble  Chair- 
men "  who  lend  their  names  for  a  con- 
sideration to  any  enterprising  company 
which  may  be  speculating  in  Liberty. 
When  we  see  these  things,  we  revert 

70 


SHELLEY 
to  the  old  lines  in  which  Persius  tells 
how  you  cannot  turn  Dama'into  a  free- 
man  by  twirling  him  round  your  finger 
and  calling  him  Marcus  Dama. 

Again,  Shelley  desired  a  religion  of 
humanity,  and  that  meant,  to  him,  a 
religion  for  humanity,  a  religion  which, 
unlike  the  spectral  Christianity  about 
him,  should  permeate  and  regulate  the 
whole  organization  of  men.  And  the 
feeling  is  one  with  which  a  Catholic 
must  sympathize,  in  an  age  where — if 
we  may  say  so  without  irreverence — 
the  Almighty  has  been  made  a  consti- 
tutional Deity,  with  certain  state- 
grants  of  worship,  but  no  influence 
over  political  affairs.  In  these  matters 
his  aims  were  generous,  if  his  methods 
were  perniciously  mistaken.  In  his 
theory  of  Free  Love  alone,  borrowed 
like  the  rest  from  the  Revolution,  his 
aim  was  as  mischievous  as  his  method. 
At  the  same  time  he  was  at  least  logi- 

71 


x 


SHELLEY 
cal.  His  theory  was  repulsive  but  com- 
prehensible. Whereas  from  our  present 
via  media — facilitation  of  divorce — can 
only  result  the  era  when  the  young 
lady  in  reduced  circumstances  will  no 
longer  turn  governess,  but  will  be  open 
to  engagement  as  wife  at  a  reasonable 
stipend. 

We  spoke  of  the  purity  of  Shelley's 
poetry.  We  know  of  but  three  passages 
to  which  exception  can  be  taken.  One 
is  happily  hidden  under  a  heap  of  Shel- 
leian  rubbish.  Another  is  offensive  be- 
cause it  presents  his  theory  of  Free 
Love  in  its  most  odious  form.  The 
third  is  very  much  a  matter,  we  think, 
for  the  individual  conscience.  Compare 
with  this  the  genuinely  corrupt  Byron, 
through  the  cracks  and  fissures  of 
whose  heaving  versification  steam  up 
perpetually  the  sulphurous  vapoursfrom 
his  central  iniquity.  We  cannot  credit 

that  any  Christian  ever  had  his  faith 

72 


SHELLEY 

shaken  through  reading  Shelley,  un- 
less his  faith  were  shaken  "before  he 
read  Shelley.  Is  any  safely-havened 
bark  likely  to  slip  its  cable,  and  make 
for  a  flag  planted  on  the  very  reef 
where  the  planter  himself  was  wrecked  ? 

Why  indeed  (one  is  tempted  to  ask 
in  concluding)  should  it  be  that  the 
poets  who  have  written  for  us  the 
poetry  richest  in  skiey  grain,  most 
free  from  admixture  with  the  dul- 
ler things  of  earth — the  Shelleys,  the 
Coleridges,  the  Keats' — are  the  very 
poets  whose  lives  are  among  the  sad- 
dest records  in  literature?  Is  it  that  (by 
some  subtile  mystery  of  analogy)  sor- 
row, passion  and  fantasy  are  indissolu- 
bly  connected,  like  wrater,  fire  and 
cloud;  that  as  from  sun  and  dew  are 
born  the  vapours,  so  from  fire  and 
tears  ascend  the  "  visions  of  aerial  joy  " ; 
that  the  harvest  wraves  richest  over  the 

73 


SHELLEY 

battlefields  of  the  soul;  that  the  heart, 
like  the  earth,  smells  sweetest  after 
rain;  that  the  spell  on  which  depend 
such  necromantic  castles  is  some  spirit 
of  pain  charm-poisoned  at  their  baser* 
Such  a  poet,  it  may  be,  mists  with 
sighs  the  window  of  his  life  until  the 
tears  run  down  it;  then  some  air  of 
searching  poetry,  like  an  air  of  search- 
ing frost,  turns  it  to  a  crystal  won- 
der. The  god  of  golden  song  is  the 
god,  too,  of  the  golden  sun;  so  perad- 
venture  songlight  is  like  sunlight,  and 
darkens  the  countenance  of  the  soul. 
Perhaps  the  rays  are  to  the  stars  what 
thorns  are  to  the  flowers;  and  so  the 
poet,  after  wandering  over  heaven, 
returns  with  bleeding  feet.  Less  tragic 
in  its  merely  temporal  aspect  than  the 
life  of  Keats  or  Coleridge,  the  life  of 
Shelley  in  its  moral  aspect  is,  perhaps, 

*  We  hope  that  we  need  not  refer  the  reader,  for 
the  methods  of  magic  architecture,  to  Ariosto  and  that 
Atlas  among  enchanters,  Beckford. 

74 


SHELLEY 
more  tragical  than  that  of  either;  his 
dying  seems  a  myth,  a  figure  of  his 
living;  the  material  shipwreck  a  figure 
of  the  immaterial. 

Enchanted  child,  born  into  a  world 
unchildlike;  spoiled  darling  of  Nature, 
playmate  of  her  elemental  daughters; 
"pard-like  spirit,  beautiful  and  swift," 
laired  amidst  the  burning  fastnesses  of 
his  own  fervid  mind;  bold  foot  along 
the  verges  of  precipitous  dream;  light 
leaper  from  crag  to  crag  of  inaccessible 
fancies;  towering  Genius,  whose  soul 
rose  like  a  ladder  between  heaven  and 
earth  with  the  angels  of  song  ascending 
and  descending  it ; — he  is  shrunken  into 
the  little  vessel  of  death,  and  sealed  with 
the  unshatterable  seal  of  doom,  and  cast 
down  deep  below  the  rolling  tides  of 
Time.  Mighty  meat  for  little  guests, 
when  the  heart  of  Shelley  was  laid  in 
the  cemetery  of  Caius  Cestius!  Beauty, 
music,  sweetness,  tears — the  mouth  of 

75 


SHELLEY 
the  worm  has  fed  of  them  all.  Into  that 
sacred  bridal-^loom  of  death  where  he 
holds  his  nuptials  with  eternity  let  not 
our  rash  speculations  follow  him;  let 
us  hope  rather  that  as,  amidst  material 
nature,  where  our  dull  eyes  see  only 
ruin,  the  finer  eve  of  science  has  dis- 
covered life  in  putridity  and  vigour  in 
decay,  seeing  dissolution  even  and  dis- 
integration, which  in  the  mouth  of 
man  symbolize  disorder,  to  be  in  the 
works  of  God  undeviating  order,  and 
the  manner  of  our  corruption  to  be  no 
less  wonderful  than  the  manner  of  our 
health, — so,  amidst  the  supernatural 
universe,  some  tender  undreamed  sur- 
prise of  life  in  doom  awaited  that  wild 
nature,  which,  worn  by  warfare  with 
itself,  its  Maker,  and  all  the  world,  now 

Sleeps,  and  never  palates  more  the  dug, 
The  beggar's  nurse,  and  Caesar's. 


4 


mT* 


THE  NOTES 

F^    THOMPSON    wrote    the 
SA  !e  in  the  year  18S9,  wnen 

he  had  but  lately  ended  a  long  term  of 
alienation  trom   pens  and  It   hap- 

pened   that   Bishop    (  al) 

:an,whok         the  Pod  iin 

-e,  and  had  known  Francis  himselr" 
at  Ushaw  College,  met  him  in  London; 
and  out  of  this  meet  the  Bishop's 

h  to  sc  m,car  >tion  that 

he  should  contribute  a  paper  to  The  Du: 
Re  I  venerable  Qu:: 

...  W  <;eman  halr'a  centu-  rc, 

hop  Vaughan  now  owned  bu:  not 

edit.  It  inhv  jal  rather  than 

lite  litions;  and    a  due  con 

■  1  tor  t  ted  1    e  opening  passa_ 

the   1  ce  some-.  ed. 

H  ca   that  Theol 

*  be  reo 
h  another  recor  had  been 

•      N  tttut  It  the  end  of 

the  jenth 

Go  ft:  : 

And  Thorn:  plea  had  th>  ed  re- 
levance—  that  the  choice  of  a  till  \  left 
to  hi  nisei'            fallen   upon   S  er 

79 


THE  NOTES 

haps  a  dubious  choice.  At  any  rate  the  article 
was  returned  to  him  from  The  Dublin — one 
more  of  those  memorable  rejections  that  go 
into  the  treasury  of  all  neglected  writers' 
consolations,perhaps  their  illusions. Thrown 
aside  by  its  discouraged  author,  the  Essay 
was  found  among  his  papers  after  his  death. 
His  Literary  Executor  thought  it  right  that 
the  Review  for  which  it  was  originally 
designed  should  again  have  the  offer  of  it, 
since  a  new  generation  of  readers  had  arisen, 
and  another  editor,  in  days  otherwise  re- 
generate. Thus  it  happened  that  this  orphan 
among  Essays  entered  at  last  on  a  full  in- 
heritance of  fame.*   Appreciative  readers 

•It  appeared  in  The  Dublin,  dated  July  1908, 
with  the  following  footnote  by  the  Editor :  "  The 
editor  thinks  that  his  readers  will  welcome  this  very 
remarkable  posthumous  essay  in  the  precise  form  in 
which  it  was  found  among  the  papers  of  its  author, 
the  late  Mr  Francis  Thompson.  It  lacks,  of  course, 
the  author's  final  revision,  and  may  contain  a  sen- 
tence here  or  there  which  Mr  Thompson  himself 
would  not  finally  have  endorsed  without  those  omis- 
sions or  qualifying  phrases  which  a  writer  makes  or 
adds  before  passing  his  work  for  publication.  Such 
modifications  cannot,  however,  be  satisfactorily  made 
by  another  hand,  and  only  obvious  corrections  neces- 
sary for  literary  reasons  have  been  made  by  the 
author's  literary  executor,  Mr  Wilfrid  Meynell,  to 
whose  kindness  The  Dublin  Review  is  indebted  foT  the 
offer  of  the  article." 

80 


THE  NOTES 

rapidly  spread  its  renown  beyond  their  own 
orthodox  ranks;  and,  for  the  first  time,  in  a 
long  life  of  seventy-two  years,  The  Dublin 
Review  passed  into  a  Second  Edition.  That 
also  was  soon  exhausted;  but  not  the  further 
demand,  which  this  separate  issue  is  de- 
signed to  meet.* 

*  A  leading  article,  entitled  "Poet  to  Poet,"  ap- 
pearing in  The  Observer  (August,   1908),  said:  "No 
literary    event    for    years    has    been    so    amazing   an 
instance  of  buried  jewels  brought  to  light  as  the  post- 
humous article  by  the  late  Francis  Thompson.  The 
Dublin  Review,  even  under  the  admirable  editorship 
of  Mr  Wilfrid  Ward,  had  remained  a  comparatively 
cloistered  publication.  It  has  now  leaped  into  a  second 
edition  with   a   memorable   masterpiece   of  English 
prose.  Brilliant,  joyous,  poignant  are  these  pages  of 
interpretation,  as  sensitive  and  magical  as  the  mind  of 
one  poet  ever  lent  to  the  genius  of  another.  Yet  when 
we  turn  from  the  subject  to  think  of  the  author,  the 
thing    is    as  mournful    as  splendid.  As    for    Francis 
Thompson,  whose  existence  was  as  fantastic  in  the 
true  sense  as  De  Quincey's,  and  far  more  sorrowful, 
it  is  as  though  fate,  even  after  death,  pursued  him 
with  paradoxes.  In  this  part  of  his  fame  he  has  no 
share,  and  his  finest  piece  of  prose — and  much  of  his 
prose,  though  unknown  to  the  world,  was  notable — 
sets  London  ringing  in  a  way  that  reminds  us  of  music 
never  played  until  found  among  the  papers  of  a  dead 
composer.  There  are   doubtless  many  who  still  ask 
'Who  was  Francis  Thompson:'  There  are  probably 
many  more  who,  mistaking  knowledge  of  a  poet  for 
familiarity  with  his  name,  would  do  well  to  ask  'Who 

81  f 


THE  NOTES 

THOUGH  Francis  Thompson  did  not 
live  to  know  that  his  Essay  reached 
the  reader's  heart,  even  as  it  had  reached 
Shelley's  and  his  own,  he  nevertheless  knew 
his  labour  to  be  not  all  in  vain.  He  himself 
quarried  in  that  mine  of  his  own  making, 
and  garnished  his  poetry  with  some  of  those 
"buried  jewels"  of  his  prose.  In  the  passage 
which  tells  of  the  Universe  as  the  singer's 
"box  of  toys,"  we  recognize  the  matrix 
from  which  he  cut  a  verse  in  The  Hound 
of  Heaven ;  while  the  closing  page  of  the 
article  lives — or  dies — again  in  the  stanzas 
of  An  Anthem  of  Earth: 

Ah,  Mother,  Mother, 
What  is  this  Man,  thy  darling  kissed  and  cuffed, 
Thou  lustingly  engender'st, 
To  sweat,  and  make  his  brag,  and  rot, 
Crowned  with  all  honour  and  all  shamefulness  ? 


was  Shelley?'  The  Essay  answers  both  questions 
equally.  As  in  all  the  highest  work  of  that  kind,  its 
author  divines  the  secrets  of  another  nature  by  the 
certainty  that  his  own  was  akin  to  it;  and  sympathy, 
inspiring  true  vision,  reveals  the  seer  as  well  as  the 
seen.  That  the  Essay  should  appear  at  last,  instinct 
with  the  first  freshness  of  life — that  the  expression  of 
the  inward  glory  of  a  man's  youth  should  become  his 
own  rich  epitaph — this  is  perhaps  worth  all  the  years 
of  oblivion  out  of  which  a  masterpiece  has  been  re- 
deemed." 

8a 


THE  NOTES 

From  nightly  towers 

He  dogs  the  secret  footsteps  of  the  heavens, 

Sifts  in  his  hands  the  stars,  weighs  them  as  gold-dust. 

And  yet  is  he  successive  unto  nothing 

But  patrimony  of  a  little  mould, 

And  entail  of  four  planks.  Thou  hast  made  his  mouth 

Avid  of  all  dominion  and  all  mightiness, 

All  sorrow,  all  delight,  all  topless  grandeurs, 

All  beauty,  and  all  starry  majesties, 

And  dim  transtellar  things ; — even  that  it  may, 

Filled  in  the  ending  with  a  puff  of  dust, 

Confess — "It  is  enough."  The  world  left  empty 

What  that  poor  mouthful  crams.  His  heart  is  builded 

For  pride,  for  potency,  infinity, 

All  heights,  all  deeps,  and  all  immensities, 

Arrased  with  purple  like  the  house  of  kings, 

To  stall  the  grey-rat,  and  the  carrion-worm 

Statelily  lodge.  Mother  of  mysteries, 

Saver  of  dark  sayings  in  a  thousand  tongues, 

Who  bringest  forth  no  saying  yet  so  dark 

As  we  ourselves,  thy  darkest! 

SHORTLY  after  he  wrote  this  Shelley 
paper,  Francis  Thompson  set  down  some 
"  Stray  Thoughts  on  Shelley,"  not  lacking  at 
least  a  "correlated  greatness  "  in  association 
with  the  longer  composition.  Speaking  again 
of  the  close  relation  between  the  poet  and 
the  poetry — that  "sincere  effluence  of  life  " 
which  his  own  verse  ever  was — he  protests 
against  a  writer  who  had  said  that  Shelley, 
though  himself  a  wretch,  could  write  as  an 
angel: 

83 


THE  NOTES 

"  Let  me  put  it  nakedly.  That  if  Helio- 
gabalus  had  possessed  Shelley's  brain,  he 
might  have  lived  the  life  of  Helioga- 
balus,  and  yet  have  written  the  poetry  of 
Shelley.  To  those  who  believe  this,  there  is 
nothing  to  say.  I  will  only  remark,  in 
passing,  that  I  take  it  to  be  the  most  Tar- 
tarian lie  which  ever  spurted  on  paper 
from  the  pen  of  a  good  man.  For  the 
writer  was  a  good  man,  and  had  no  idea 
that  he  was  offering  a  poniard  at  the  heart 
of  truth." 

Again,  Francis  Thompson  says: 
"The  difference  between  the  true  poet 
in  his  poetry  and  in  his  letters  or  personal 
intercourse,  is  just  the  difference  between 
two  states  of  the  one  man;  between  the 
metal  live  from  the  forge  and  the  metal 
chill.  But,  chill  or  glowing,  the  metal  is 
equally  itself.  If  difference  there  be,  it  is 
the  metal  in  glow  that  is  the  truer  to  itself. 
For,  cold,  it  may  be  overlaid  with  dirt, 
obscured  with  dust;  but  afire,  all  these  are 
scorched  away." 

THE  last  of  these  "Stray  Thoughts" 
carries  Shelley  with  them  into  the  far 
possibilities  of  an  environment  other  than 
that  which  was  his  own: 

84 


THE  NOTES 

"The  coupling  of  the  names  of  two  Eng- 
lish poets  [Keats  and  Shelley]  who  have 
possessed  in  largest  measure  that  frail 
might  of  sensibility  suggests  another  pro- 
blem which  I  should  like  to  put  forward, 
though  I  cannot  answer.  What  may  be  the 
effect  of  scenic  and  climatic  surroundings 
on  the  character  and  development  of  genius 
such  as  theirs?  Had  he  drunk  from  the  cup 
of  Italy  before,  not  after,  the  cup  of  death, 
how  would  it  have  wrought  on  the  pas- 
sionate sensitiveness  of  Keats?  Would  his 
poetry  have  changed  in  kind  or  power? 
Cooped  in  an  English  city,  what  would 
have  betided  the  dewy  sensitiveness  of 
Shelley?  Could  he  have  created  The  Revolt 
of  Islam  had  he  not  risen  warm  from  the 
lap  of  the  poets'  land?  Could  he  have  waxed 
inebriate  with  the  heady  choruses  of  Tro- 
metheus  Unbound, 

Like  tipsy  Joy,  that  reels  with  tossing  head, 

if  for  the  Baths  of  Caracalla  with  their 
'flowering  ruins,'  the  Italian  spring  and 
c  the  new  life  with  which  it  drenches  the 
spirits  even  to  intoxication,'  had  been  sub- 
stituted the  blear  streets  of  London,  the 
Avernian  birds,  the  anaemic  herbage  of  our 
parks,  the  snivel  of  our  catarrhal  May,  and 

85 


THE  NOTES 

the  worthless  IOU  which  a  sharping  Eng- 
lish spring  annually  presents  to  its  confiding 
creditors?  Climate  and  surroundings  must 
needs  influence  vital  energy;  and  upon  the 
storage  of  this  fuel,  which  the  imaginative 
worker  burns  at  a  fiercer  heat  than  other 
workers,  depends  a  poet's  sustained  power. 
With  waning  health,  the  beauty  of  Keats's 
poetry  distinctly  waned.  Nor  can  it  be, 
but  that  beings  of  such  susceptibility  as 
these  two  should  transmute  their  colour, 
like  the  Ceylonese  lizard,  with  the  shifting 
colour  of  their  shifted  station.  I  have 
fancied,  at  times,  a  degree  of  analogy  be- 
tween the  wandering  sheep  Shelley  and  the 
Beloved  Disciple.  Both  are  usually  repre- 
sented with  a  certain  feminine  beauty. 
Both  made  the  constant  burden  of  their 
teaching,  c  My  little  children,  love  one 
another.'  Both  have  similarities  in  their 
cast  of  genius.  The  Son  of  Man  walks 
amidst  the  golden  candlesticks  almost  as 
the  profane  poet  would  have  seen  Him 
walk: 

His  head  and  His  hairs  were  white  like  wool,  as 
white  as  snow;  and  His  eyes  were  as  a  flame  of  fire; 
and  His  feet  like  unto  fine  brass,  as  if  they  burned 
in  a  furnace;  and  His  voice  as  the  sound  of  many 
waters. 

86 


THE  NOTES 

"  Receive  from  Shelley,  out  of  many  kin- 
dred phantasies,  this: 

White 
Its  countenance,  like  the  whiteness  of  bright  snow.  .  .  . 
Its  hair  is  white,  the  brightness  of  white  light 
Scatter' d  in  string. 

"And,  finally,  with  somewhat  the  same 
large  elemental  vision  they  take  each  their 
stand;  leaning  athwart  the  rampires  of  crea- 
tion to  watch  the  bursting  of  over-seeded 
worlds,  and  the  mov/n  stars  falling  behind 
Time,  the  scvtheman,  in  broad  swaths 
along  the  Milky  Way.  Now,  it  is  shown 
that  the  inspired  revelations  of  the  in- 
spired Evangelist  are  tinged  with  imagery 
by  the  scenery  of  Patmos.  If,  instead  of 
looking  from  Patmos  into  the  eyes  of 
Nature,  he  had  been  girt  within  the  walls 
cf  a  Roman  dungeon,  might  not  his  eagle 
have  mewed  a  feather?  We  should  have 
had  great  Apocalyptic  prophecy;  should 
we  have  had  the  great  Apocalyptic  poem? 
For  the  poetical  greatness  of  a  Biblical 
book  has  no  necessary  commensuration 
with  its  religious  importance;  Job  is  greater 
than  Isaiah.  Might  even  St  John  have  sung 
less  highly,  though  not  less  truly,  from  out 
the  glooms  of  the  Tullianum?  Perhaps  so 

87 


THE  NOTES 

it  is;  and,  perhaps,  one*  who  hymned  the 
angel  Israfel  spoke  wider  truth  than  he 
knew: 

The  ecstasies  above 
With  thy  burning  measures  suit — 
Thy  grief,  thy  joy,  thy  hate,  thy  love, 
With  the  fervour  of  thy  lute — 
Well  may  the  stars  be  mute  ! 

Yes,  Heaven  is  thine ;  but  this 

Is  a  world  of  sweets  and  sours ; 
Our  flowers  are  merely — flowers, 

And  the  shadow  of  thy  perfect  bliss 
Is  the  sunshine  of  ours. 

If  I  could  dwell 
Where  Israfel 
Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 
He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 

A  mortal  melody, 
While  a  bolder  note  than  his  might  swell 
From  my  lyre  within  the  sky." 

*  E.  A.  Poe. 


88 


THE  INDEX 


ADONAIS,  61,  62, 

dnthem  of  Earth,  An,  8  2 
Anthony,  St,  69 
Aquinas,  St  Thomas,  18 
Arnold,  Matthew,  10,  27 

BAREILLE,Abbe,22 
Boccaccio,  22 
Beckford,  74 
Brahms,  65 
Browning,    Robert,     10, 

38,65 
Byron,  11,  20,  44 

CHOPIN,  65 
Chris  tab  el,  27,  66 
Cicero,  6 1 

C/W,  77v,  45,  52,  66 
Coleridge,  40,  65,73,  74 
Collins,  55,56 
Cowley,  5  1 
Crashaw,  50,  51,  55,  56 

T^VANTE,  17,  18,  20, 

DeQuincey,  40,  81 
Dominic,  St,  17 
Donne,  5  I 
Dryden,  30,  51 

EVE  of  Si  Agnes,  The, 
66 

Epipsycbidicn,  38 


^ABER,  23 
Francis,  St,  of  Assisi, 


18 


G 


IOTTO,  20 
Gray,  55 


HEINE,  1 1 
Heliogabalus,  84 
Hogg,  34 
Hound  of  Heaven,  The,  82 


1 


SAIAH,  $7 


JAMES,  Henry,  24 
Job,  87 
John,  St,  58,  86,  87 
'Jul:  an  and  Mad  dak,  44 

KEATS,  40,  42,  43, 
61,62,73,74,85,86 
Kubla-}\kan,  2  J,  66 

LOTUS-EATERS, 
The,  26 
Loye  in  Dian's  Lap,  5 
Lycidas,  61 

MAXGAN,  12,  39 
Marcellus,  45 
Meynell,  Alice,  37 
Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  11 -13, 
15 


89 


THE  INDEX 


NIGHTINGALE 
and  Stockdove,  The, 
+8 

Nightingale,  The,  66 

ODE  on  the  Passions,  5  5 
Ode  to  Evening,  5  5 
Ovid,  22 

PATMORE,    Coven- 
try, 36 

Penseroso,  11,  56 

Persius,  71 

Petrarch,  22 

Poe,  67,  87 

Pope,  26,  67 

Prometheus    Unbound,   46. 

58,  60,  61 
Propertius,  22 


R 


EVOLT  gf/j&fi, 
7&,  31,85 


SAVONAROLA,  22 
Sebastian,  St,  32 

Sensitive  Plant,  The,  5  2, 66 

Shakespeare,  49,  54 

Shelley,  Mary,  36 

Shelley,  a  Poet  for  Poets, 
1 1 ;  Faber's  edition  of 
Shelley  thrown  into  the 
fire,  23 ;  no  successor  in 
spontaneity,  24,  27; 
essentially  a  child,  27; 
misery  at   school,  32; 


childlike  amusements, 
35 ;  a  child  in  philo- 
sophy, 36;  he  expects 
wedded-love  to  be  a 
fountain  rather  than  a 
well,  3  8  ;Mary  Shelley, 
36;EmiliaViviani,38 ; 
his  misery  due  to  child- 
ish irrationality  rather 
than  to  adversecircum- 
stance,  38,  39;  his  lot 
compared  with  that  of 
Mangan,  Keats,  De 
Quincey,  40 ;  influence 
of  his  environment; 
that  of  Keats  and  St 
John,  85,87;  hiscritics, 
41 ;  transienceof  child- 
hood felt  in  his  destiny, 
43 ;  the  prophecy  in 
Julian  and  Maddaio,^\ ; 
The  Cloud,  as  illustra- 
ting a  child's  power 
of  make-believe,  45; 
the  Universe  his  box 
of  toys,  46;  Nature 
myths,  the  basis  of  his 
poetry,  47;  Nature  to 
him  not  a  picture  but 
a  palette,  48;  delights 
in  imagery  for  its  own 
sake,  and  is  what  the 
Metaphysical  School 
should  have  been,  50; 
Crashaw     a      Shelley 


90 


THE  INDEX 


manque,  5  I ;  his  vivify- 
ing power  over  abstrac- 
tions due  to  his  instinc- 
tive perception  ofsecret 
analogies  between  mat- 
ter and  soul,   56,  57; 
he  expresses  the  mate- 
rial and  immaterial  in 
terms  of  each  other,  5  8 ; 
his    typically    greatest 
poem,  59,  60;  his  most 
perfect  poem,   61-64; 
his  shorter  poems,  65, 
66 ;     no    metronomic 
beat,  67;  his  Atheism 
rises    to    Pantheism — 
ethereal  poetry  a  proof 
of  elevation,  69, 83,84; 
his  desire  for  an  all-per- 
meating religion,   71; 
his  poetry  not  corrupt, 
72 ;  its  effect  on  a  Chris- 
tian's  faith,    72,    73; 
poets'tragedies,73-75 ; 
Thompson's   prose  el- 
egy on  Shelley,  75,  76 
Skylark,  The,  5  2 
Spenser,  56 
Swinburne,   10,   24,  27, 


67 


T 


ENNYSON,  10 


THOMPSON,    Francis, 
his    Shelley    essay,    its 
place  in  English  Let- 
ters, and  beside  Myers' 
Virgil,    H-13;   not  a 
doubter,   15;  the  his- 
tory of  the  essay,  79-81 ; 
at  once  pure  poetry  and 
a  human  document,  1 4, 
81,    82;    facsimile    of 
autograph,  78;  "Stray 
Thoughts,"      83-88; 
passages   in    the   essay 
reproduced      in      The 
Hound  of  Heaven   and 
J.v.  Anthem  of  Earth,  82, 

83 

Tibullus,  22 

Turner,  48 

VAUGHAN,    Car- 
dinal, 79 
Virgil,  1 1-13 
Viviani,  Emilia,  38 

TITARD,  Wilfrid,  9, 

Wiseman,  Cardinal,  79 
Wordsworth,  II,  30,  48- 

WYNDHAM,     The 

Right    Hon.    George, 
9-15 


91 


BY  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

POEMS. 

PROFOUND  thought  and  far-fetched  splendour  of 
imagery — qualities  which  ought  to  place  him  in 
the  permanent  ranks  of  fame. — Coventry  Patmore. 

A  VOLUME  of  poetry  has  not  appeared  in  Queen 
Victoria's  reign  more  authentic  in  greatness  of 
utterance  than  this.  In  the  rich  and  virile  harmonies 
of  his  line,  in  strange  and  lovely  vision,  in  fundamental 
meaning,  he  is  possibly  the  first  of  Victorian  poets,  and 
at  least  is  he  of  none  the  inferior. ...  In  nothing  does 
Thompson  appear  more  authentically  a  poet  than  in 
the  fact  that  his  sense  of  beauty  is  part  of  his  religion. 
In  this  he  is  like  Shelley,  except  that  Shelley's  sense  of 
beauty  was  his  religion.  Therefore,  Shelley  wrote  the 
glorious  Epipsycbidion ;  therefore,  Mr  Thompson  writes 
Her  Portrait;  and,  speaking  for  ourselves,  we  shall  say 
at  once  that  Epipsychidion,\or\g  unique  in  the  language, 
has  at  last  found  its  parallel,  perhaps  its  peer,  in  Her 
Portrait.  This  first  volume  is  no  mere  promise — it  is  it- 
self among  the  great  achievements  of  English  poetry  ; 
it  has  reached  the  peak  of  Parnassus  at  a  bound. — 
J.  L.  Garvin. 

THAT  minority  who  can  recognize  the  essentials 
under  the  accidents  of  poetry,  and  who  feel  that 
it  is  to  poetic  Form  alone,  and  not  to  forms,  that  eter- 
nity belongs,  will  agree  that,  alike  in  wealth  and  dig- 
nity of  imagination,  in  depth  and  subtlety  of  thought, 
and  in  magic  and  mastery  of  language,  a  new  poet  of 
the  first  rank  is  to  be  welcomed  in  the  author  of  this 
volume. — H.  D.  Traill,  in  The  Nineteenth  Century. 


THE  HOUND o/HEAVEN 

Issued    separately   in   Japanese   Vellum    Cover. 

THE  winter's  labour  [writes  Lady  BuRNE-JoNEsof 
her  Husband  in  the  year  1893]  was  cheered  by 
the  appearance  of  a  small  volume  of  poems  by  an  author 
whose  name  was  till  then  unknown  to  us.  The  little 
book  moved  him  to  admiration  and  hope;  and,  speak- 
ing of  the  poem  he  liked  best  in  it,  he  said  :  "Since 
Gabriel's  Blessed  Damozel  no  mystical  words  have  so 
touched  me  as  The  Hound  of  Heaven.  Shall  I  ever  forget 
how  I  undressed  and  dressed  again,  and  had  to  undress 
again — a  thing  I  most  hate — because  I  could  think  of 
nothing  else?" — Memorials  of 'Edward  Burne-Jones. 

IS  there  any  religious  poem  carrying  so  much  of  the 
passion  of  penitence  since  George  Herbert  wrote 
The  Flower  and  The  Collar  ?  And  these  are  short  lyrics, 
and  simple  in  expression,  while  The  Hound  of  Heaven  is 
an  Ode  in  the  manner  of  Crashaw.  With  Crashaw, 
indeed,  we  cannot  avoid  comparing  it,  and  in  the  com- 
parison it  more  than  holds  its  own. — The  Spettator. 

WE  do  not  think  we  forget  any  of  the  splendid 
things  of  an  English  anthology  when  we  say  that 
The  Houndof  'Heaven  seems  to  us,on  the  whole,  the  most 
wonderful  lyric  in  the  language.  It  fingers  all  the  stops 
of  the  spirit,  and  we  hear  now  a  thrilling  and  dolorous 
note  of  doom,  and  now  the  quiring  of  the  spheres,  and 
now  the  very  pipes  of  Pan,  but  under  all  the  still,  sad 
music  of  humanity.  It  is  the  return  of  the  nineteenth 
century  to  Thomas  a  Kempis. — The  Bookman. 

IT  is  not  too  early  to  say  that  people  will  still  be 
learning  it  by  heart  two  hundred  years  hence,  for  it 
has  about  it  the  unique  thing  that  makes  for  immor- 
tality.— The  limes. 

/ 


NEW  POEMS. 

THE  first  thing  is  to  recognize  and  declare  that  we 
are  here  face  to  face  with  a  poet  of  the  first  order. 
— The  Daily  Chronicle. 

AS  a  matter  of  fact — such  fad  as  one  kisses  the 
book  to  in  a  court  of  law — it  was  in  a  railway 
carriage  that  I  first  read  Mr  Thompson's  poem  The 
{Mistress  of  Vision;  but,  in  such  truth  as  would  pass 
anywhere  but  in  a  court  of  law,  it  was  at  Cambridge, 
in  the  height  of  the  summer  term,  and  in  a  Fellow's 
Garden,  that  the  revelation  first  came.  I  thought  then 
in  my  enthusiasm  that  no  such  poem  had  been  written 
or  attempted  since  Coleridge  attempted,  and  left  of£ 
writing,  Kubla  Khan.  In  a  cooler  hour  I  think  so  yet ;  and, 
were  my  age  twenty-five  or  so,  it  would  delight  me  to 
swear  to  it,  riding  to  any  man's  drawbridge  who  shuts 
his  gates  against  it,  and  blowing  the  horn  of  challenge. 
It  is  verily  a  wonderful  poem;  hung,  like  a  fairy  tale, 
in  middle  air — a  sleeping  palace  of  beauty  set  in  a  glade 
in  the  heart  of  the  Woods  of  Westermain,  surprised 
there  and  recognized  with  a  gasp  as  satisfying,  and  sum- 
marizing a  thousand  youthful  longings  after  beauty.  To 
me  also  my  admiration  seemed  too  hot  to  last ;  but 
four  or  five  years  leave  me  unrepentant.  It  seemed  to  me 
to  be  more  likely  to  be  a  perishable  joy,  because  I  had 
once  clutched  at,  and  seemed  to  grasp,  similar  beauties 
in  Poe. — Mr  Quiller-Couch,  in  The  Daily  News. 

WITH  Francis  Thompson  we  lose  the  greatest 
poetic  energy  since  Browning.  In  his  poetry,  as 
in  the  poetry  of  the  universe,  you  can  work  infinitely 
out  and  out,  but  yet  infinitely  in  and  in.  These  two 
infinities  are  the  mark  of  greatness;  and  he  was  a  great 
poet. — G.  K.  Chesterton. 


SISTER  SONGS 

A  BOOK  which  Shelley  would  have  adored. — Mr 
William  Archer. 

TO  childhood  and  innocence  Francis  Thompson 
raised  a  magnificent  temple  in  Sister  Songs. — The 
Spectator. 

PASSAGES  which  Spenser  would  not  have  dis- 
owned.— Times. 

SELECTED  POEMS. 

With  a  Biographical  Note  by  W.  M.  and  a  Portrait. 

THIS  volume  will  serve  to  bring  before  a  wider 
circle  of  readers  some  of  the  most  individual 
poetic  work  of  the  last  century.  The  sense  of  little 
things,  the  appealing  tenderness  of  children,  are  pres- 
ent to  him  no  less  than  the  grand  and  sublime  elements 
of  being.  He  hears  the  "music  of  the  spheres,"  it  is 
true;  but  he  hears  it  as  much  in  the  child's  prattle  or 
the  sea-shell  as  in  the  thunder  or  the  earthquake.  His 
poems  on  children,  rightly  placed  first  in  this  selection, 
are  not  the  least  of  his  legacy. — The  Athenaum. 

THIS  little  book  is  an  admirable  selection  from 
three  volumes  of  poetry,  to  which  has  been  added 
one  piece  from  the  poet's  unpublished  manuscript. — 
The  Morning  Tost. 

HERE  is  the  best  of  what  he  wrote,  gathered  with 
equal  jealousy  that  nothing  less  than  good  should 
find  a  place  in  it,  and  care  that  nothing  very  good 
should  be  omitted.  .  .  .  The  selection  is  extraordinarily 
impressive,  with  a  richness  of  music  and  a  poignancy 
and  depth  of  feeling  such  as  can  be  found  only  in  the 
masterpieces  of  English  song. — TheGuardian. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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